Welcome to Austin Real Estate | Lake Travis Real Estate Sign in | Help

Austin Real Estate Guy Blog

Read about Austin real estate and other thoughts about the area.

News

  • Sam Chapman is a real estate agent with Private Label Realty and is licensed in the state of Texas. License # 0509637.
Home Valuation Estimating Sites Stink

Home Valuation Estimating Sites Stink

OK, I shouldn’t say they stink, but they can be far from accurate in the state of Texas.  Many home buyers, especially the younger crowd, think they can do their own research on home prices.  They think they can use the data they have collected to make an offer on a house.  What they don’t know can really hurt them.

Someone in my office compared different websites to look at home value estimates.   Then an actual Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) was done to see what the true market value of homes was done using actual sold data from the MLS.  Websites used for estimates were the Travis County Appraisal District CAD, ValueMap, Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia.  I can not show addresses for these homes, but here is the data:

Austin home value estimates graph

As you can see, some of the estimates are close and many are not close at all to market value as determined by using MLS data.  This is because Texas is a non-disclosure state.  Sold data is not publicly available.  Everybody from the CAD to the other sited listed guesses and I don’t know what they base values on.

So if you are an Austin home buyer or seller, hook up with a qualified real estate agent.  If you are a seller, you need to know how to price a home to sell.  If you are a home buyer, you need to know what to come in with as a decent offer.

Posted: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 1:58 PM by Sam Chapman

Comments

anon said:

Boy this postt just smacks of the typical scared realtor in Texas.  Between the conservative Texan nature and mainly the Realtor lobby groups Texas is likely to remain a nondisclosure state.  There are drawbacks to this, mainly that it makes protesting tax valuations more difficult, since the counties cherry pick their compares and ignore real comparables a homeowner brings in from a realtor.  

Sam, have you ever checked in on some of your trnsactions the following year after a sale or purchase?  From what I've seen the above median sales don't seem to have their valuation increase to match the sales price (or even come close), escpecially compared to a property around median.  Properties below median are frequently valued above the sale price.  All this is really for resales; new construction is either pegged at contract price or low, dependabt on the county it's in.

# July 7, 2009 8:14 PM

Sam Chapman said:

Hey Anon - just trying to get reality out to some of the uninformed buyers out there.

What I am seeing this year is a 10% rise in valueations even though market value has dropped in most areas.  There must have been loads of protests this year.

# July 9, 2009 10:02 AM
New Comments to this post are disabled