Comps for my House: How To Find Comparable Values for Homes in My Area

How do I find comps for my house? It’s a common question for any homeowner looking to sell. Read on for tips on how to find and evaluate real estate comps.

Thinking about selling your home means a long list of things to do to prepare. Especially if you’re interested in selling by owner, you’ll have to start at the literal beginning — figuring out the listing price. Working with a local real estate agent can help navigate the complexities of pricing homes accurately using real estate comparables.

Before the staging, property photographs, and listing write-up, you need to know how to price your home. It’s a tricky balance. If you go too high, your home may sit on the market for a long time. If you go too low, people may worry there’s something wrong with your home, something they can’t easily see. Either way, you’re not getting the best possible outcome putting your home on the market.

To establish the best possible price for your home, you need to look at comps. These are homes within your same neighborhood that are similar in size, age, condition, and overall features. They should have also sold recently. Homes can look a little different, but you want to have as much in common as possible to generate an appropriate price for your own home. Hiring a professional appraiser is also crucial to obtain an unbiased and accurate valuation of your home’s worth.

How do I find real estate comps that make sense for my house? Track down the right kind of comparable properties to price your home by following this process. Once you’re done, you’ll have a realistic idea of how much your house will sell for on the market.

1. Definition and Purpose of Real Estate Comps

Real estate comps, short for comparables, are recently sold homes in the same neighborhood that are similar in size, age, condition, and overall features to the property being evaluated. The purpose of real estate comps is to provide a benchmark for determining the market value of a property. By analyzing the sales data of comparable properties, home sellers, buyers, and real estate agents can establish a fair and competitive listing price, negotiate offers, and make informed decisions about the property’s value.

2. Importance of Accurate Comps in the Local Real Estate Market

Accurate real estate comps are crucial in the local real estate market because they provide a snapshot of the current market conditions and trends. By analyzing the sales data of recently sold properties, real estate agents and professionals can identify patterns and fluctuations in the market, which helps them to make informed decisions about pricing, marketing, and negotiations. Moreover, accurate comps help to ensure that properties are priced competitively, which can lead to faster sales, higher prices, and increased customer satisfaction.

1. Begin your search online

The first step to locating comps is to look at recent sales in your local market. The same sites that help you look for a new home can also provide the right information so you can determine a reasonable sales price.

Real estate professionals play a crucial role in accessing and sharing critical property data using the MLS, which can be invaluable for homeowners making significant decisions regarding home sales and purchases.

These iBuyer and listing sites are typically the best places to search:

• Zillow — Not only does Zillow let you see recent sales, but they also have their own Zestimates for every property. You can even look at your own property, although these numbers aren’t as reliable as what you can calculate using the actual sale prices of comps.
• Realtor.com — You can also track what your home is worth here. Realtor.com allows you to look at home value from multiple sources to get an average estimate. You can also access a list of recently sold properties.
• Trulia — Use Trulia to browse sold listings as well as gain basic insights into your own neighborhood. This will help you understand where your home fits within the range of properties available in your local real estate market.
• Redfin — Another site with a home value calculation tool, Redfin can give you a quick estimate on your own property, while also providing details on recently sold homes in your area.

Whichever site you prefer, it’s fine to use the estimate tool for your own home. But don’t replace your search for real estate comps with the information you get. Researching similar properties will help you get a more accurate price than letting these sites do the work for you. Just be sure to limit the search for homes to those in your local market that sold within the past six months. In the end, you want to have at least three solid comps you can use in the equation to price your own home.

2. Establish features to compare with recently sold homes

After pooling a larger list of homes that could work as comps, the next step is to start comparing features. This helps you eliminate ones that aren’t close enough in age, size, or upgrades to work as appropriate comps. Homes that are too different from yours won’t help you get an accurate price and can lead to your home lingering too long on the market.

Key features to compare include:

• Square footage
• Property acreage
• Home Age
• Architectural style
• Number of bedrooms and bathrooms
• Number of floors

If you’ve made a few upgrades to your home, you’ll also want to try and find comps that contain those too. If you can’t, make sure you give your selling price a little boost to account for the nicer items in your own home. Likewise, if you only find homes with upgrades that you don’t have, knock your selling price down a touch.

Some upgrades to account for include:

• Hardwood floors
• Granite countertops
• Upgraded kitchen cabinets
• Stainless appliances
• Finished basement

Finding recently-sold homes with as many features as possible in common with yours make those properties the strongest comps. Even if you have to go a little outside your neighborhood, looking at comparable home sale with the same neighborhood features will still help you calculate the most competitive price.

3. Whittle down your options

At this point, you should have a small, concise list of potential house comps. You want to then narrow down your list to between three and five options. Having more than that isn’t necessary and could leave you with too much discrepancy between properties.

Make sure to look at the pictures of each property within their listing to ensure the stats on the home are correct. You also want to be sure you’re only looking at homes with a final recorded sale price. Those still pending sales aren’t necessarily accurate and could skew your estimate.

Pick the homes most like yours in age and size when it comes to prioritizing key features like the number of bedrooms. Don’t look at townhouses if you live in a single family home and vice versa. Then, see how many additional features you have in common. The ones with the highest overall number are your comps.

4. Calculate a price

The two big pieces of information you’ll need to calculate the price of your home from comps are their final sale price and their actual square footage. Your goal is to get a price per square foot which you can then apply to your own home. To get this number:

• Add up all the final sold prices of your comps.
• Divide by the total number of comps.
• Add up all the square footage of your comps.
• Divide by the total number of comps.
• Divide the answers to your two equations.

You now have the average price per square foot. Take that number and multiply it by your square footage, and now you’ve estimated the fair market value of your home. Make adjustments up or down based on the upgrades you have or haven’t made in your home compared to the comps, and you’re done.

7. The Role of Real Estate Agents in the Comps Process

Real estate agents play a vital role in the comps process by providing expert analysis and guidance to home sellers and buyers. Agents have access to the multiple listing service (MLS) and other online real estate platforms, which enables them to search for recently sold properties and gather data on comparable sales. By analyzing this data, agents can create a comparative market analysis (CMA) that provides a detailed report on the market value of the property. Agents can also use their knowledge of the local market and their experience in negotiating sales to help clients make informed decisions about pricing and offers.

8. Common Mistakes to Avoid When Finding Comps

When finding real estate comps, there are several common mistakes to avoid. One mistake is to rely solely on online estimate tools, which can provide inaccurate or outdated information. Another mistake is to compare properties that are not similar in size, age, condition, or features. It’s also important to avoid using pending sales or properties that are not yet sold, as these may not reflect the current market conditions. Additionally, it’s crucial to consider the location and neighborhood of the properties being compared, as these can significantly impact the market value. By avoiding these common mistakes, home sellers and buyers can ensure that they are using accurate and reliable comps to inform their decisions.

5. Weigh time and money in the local real estate market

With the final price ready, the next thing to think about is how that price makes you feel. Is it less than you thought it would be? If so, is there anything you can do to your home to increase its value? If you do decide to sell, remember to consider the commission for any real estate agents that may be involved in the home sale.

Taking these factors into consideration can help you decide the best way in which to sell your home now that you’re ready. Maybe it will take too much time and/or money to get your home ready to list for the price you want. In that case, you might want to consider alternate methods of selling your home besides the real estate market.

Related: How Much Is Your Home Really Worth?

Bypass the comp process altogether with an off-market buyer or real estate agent

If the comps don’t bring you the best news, don’t give up on selling your home. Consider working with an off-market buyer to get a price as close to market value as possible without the hassle of a traditional Multiple Listing Service (MLS) listing.

At Sundae, we help sell houses as-is on our marketplace for the highest price possible. No staging and no repairs are needed. We understand how to fairly evaluate a home and help you get a competitive offer in your hand from our network of investors.