How to Find Out What the House Prices Are for My Area
It can be invaluable to know the price of homes in your neighborhood, but people are often intimidated by the real estate market and don't know where to start. It turns out that finding the value of any home in your area is easy and once you have this knowledge, you will be better equipped to buy or sell a home in your area. This can be done in a matter of minutes with Internet access, but even without modern technology you can find this information at your local county government office.
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Instructions
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Locate County Assessor
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Call Information to find out the phone number and address of the assessor's office in your county. Every county government utilizes this office to assess property tax on each property in the county.
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Locate homes in your neighborhood for which you would like to know the price. You may want to write down a list of addresses of houses in the area that you want to buy or houses that are similar to the home you are trying to sell.
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Visit the county assessor's office and look up the addresses on the list you brought. This should be as simple as handing your written list of addresses over to the county assessor. The county assessor keeps records of property taxes each year, as well as each time the home is sold.
Locate Home Prices Online
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Visit an online home appraisal website such as Yahoo! Real Estate, eppraisal.com, zillow.com, homes.com, domania.com or netronline.com.
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Enter the addresses of the properties in your area and find out the value of those homes. This value is an estimate of the price of each home calculated from public records kept by the county. In order to assess property taxes, the county keeps records of the number of bedrooms and baths, as well as the overall square feet in each house. This information is then combined with the county records of prices that the nearby homes sold for recently.
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Write down the price for each home on your list. Be sure to check back on these websites and record the prices of the same addresses a few weeks later and then a few weeks after that. This way, you will be able to witness and track the trending of home prices in your area.
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Tips & Warnings
These days you can usually visit your local county government online. Try looking up the assessor's office in your county and you may find you can look up the public records for any address in the area from the comfort of your own home.
Although it can help to know home prices in your neighborhood, when you are buying or selling a home you may still be forced to get a full appraisal. This can cost a substantial sum.
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Resources
- Photo Credit house image by Cora Reed from Fotolia.com
