My Home Is Worth How Much???!!

Keeping track of the value of our homes is a national pasttime of many people, especially in areas like Menlo Park, Atherton and the Silicon Valley areas where there are millions of dollars on the line. We all want to know how much our home is worth since it tends to be the biggest investment we have, yet the process for finding what it's really worth isn't easy.

We know how to get the value of our portfolio's...we look online or at our monthly statement and there it is in plain black and white. Stocks, bonds, 401k and anything else we have all summarized and easy to see what we are worth. The same goes with our cash - we pull up our checking or savings statements and can get down to the penny with the touch of a button on our smart phone. Instant gratification to our perceived self worth given to us in the form of dollars and cents.

But, when we try to figure out what our home is worth, our only approach is to jump online and click around the various webites that don't know us, our neighborhood, and have never seen our home...yet they can tell us what it's worth. Most of the time, we usually end up yelling at our computer screen "My Home Is Worth How Much!!!??" and go to another website that might give us a more positive estimate. 

The irony of the situation is that we believe the numbers if we are looking to buy a home ("Zillow said I should only offer X for the home" a buyer tells his real estate agent), but if we are happy staying put or looking to sell, then those same numbers are quite a bit off. The best numbers for our situation are always from our new favorite real estate website that we freely quote to others!

I recently came across an interesting video from The Wall Street Journal that discusses this situation and I think they do a good job of explaining why these websites are not to be trusted for a real number.  Cut and paste this link into your browser to check out the video -   http://online.wsj.com/video/the-fuzzy-math-of-home-values/EE72BF16-8E8C-...

The bottom line is that only a local agent can really tell you how much your home is worth. Our job is to know the neighborhoods, know the recent sales and the condition of those homes compared to yours and come up with a trustworthy number. It might not always be the number you want to hear, but it will be based on actual local market knowledge and research. 

And who are you going to trust, somebody that gives you a "Zestimate" based on your address, or somebody who has been in all the homes in your neighborhood and knows all the secrets of those homes?