5 Reasons Why Online Estimates Aren’t as Good as a Personalized Home Valuation

Why Online Estimates Aren’t as Good as getting Personal Home Values

Are you ready to sell your Seattle area home? Sometimes you don’t just get an accurate estimate online. Keep reading to find out why personalized home values are better.

Are you looking to sell your home?

One of the most important parts of selling your home is understanding home values. Homeowners are increasingly turning to automated online estimate services for this, but did you know that they can be highly inaccurate?

Read on to find out why a personalized home estimate is a better option.

1. Pattern Recognition

Automated systems rely on you feeding data into your computer. It will then process this data and come up with a home value estimate.

It isn’t focused on the data itself though, it focuses on patterns. Generalizations and automated data are not a sure fire way to getting an accurate estimate.

You could actually be doing yourself and your house a disservice. By going straight to online estimation tools, you could be getting inflated estimates that hurt your chance of a sale.

2. Flawed data

Public records are often incomplete, or just wrong. The country’s 3,100 counties don’t all record the same information in the same way. This can leave automated tools with gaps they cannot work around.

If you’ve made home improvements like an extension and it isn’t recorded, the automated results won’t account for it. A larger floor plan, or an extra bedroom should be an increase in value that you won’t see.

Many tools use the ZIP Code, and average out the price. This can be informative, but it isn’t the complete picture and not an accurate method to use on its own.

3. Differences Between Models

There are differences between services as the systems are proprietary. This means that the results can be vary with different calculators.

Unfinished basements and garages aren’t usually include in the square footage. Some estimators will include their full square footage, or they might only take half of it.

Different models can also omit different, similar homes. This will cause a huge impact on the final valuation.

4. Neighborhood Sale Rates

If few homes in your neighborhood have sold recently, this will skew the results. The more that sell, the more data there is on their sale prices. The less information there is to draw from, the less accurate their estimation.

If the calculator only has older sales to process and nothing recent, this can impact the results too. It might not pick up changing trends in the market or changes to average prices. You need current sales to get a current valuation.

5. Unique Selling Points

Even if a house next door has the same number of rooms as yours, it doesn’t mean it’s value is the same. Houses can vary a lot even in the same neighborhood. Values can vary just as much.

A computer algorithm won’t account for any special features or additions to your home. If you have a great view, over a beautiful landscape, this won’t be shown in the estimation.

Accurate Home Values

As you can see, online estimates don’t give the best estimate of home values. A personalized home valuation from a realtor can account for your homes unique selling points, and they can provide further useful information, such as the best time to sell.

If you are looking to sell your home in Western Washington, book a free home valuation today!