As the housing market in St. Charles continues it’s steady improvement, more buyers are out looking for their next home. No buyer wants to overpay so I do a pretty extensive analysis to determine a fair price for the house. See an example of one of my spreadsheets below.
I use the MLS to find a decent size sample of recent comparable sales of similar property types that are in the same area as the subject property. Since few houses are exactly alike I make price adjustments for the difference in a side by side comparison. For example, if the subject property has a finished basement but the comparable sale does not, I add the value of a finished basement to the comparable so that it is more like the subject property.
After making the side by side adjustments, I put all the information into a spreadsheet (example below). A useful value to include is "Assessed Value" which is the amount that a house is taxed on. In Illinois, the township assessors try to equalize values across property types so that people pay a fair tax even though properties may be different. Assessed value is not the same as market value, but it can serve as a proxy for value in a market with few transactions (eg upper end houses).
Finally, I take the ratios and apply them to the subject property to get a range for the predicted selling price.
- Sold Price as a percent of List Price
- Sold Price as a percent of Assessed Value
- Sold price per square foot.
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