If you want a good idea as to what your home might sell for, or what one may cost, you need to go local; forget about national home prices.
Who cares if home prices are falling in Denver if they’re rising in Boston, and vice versa? What about home prices sold in my neighborhood?
If you look at home prices sold in and around your area, and you’ll get a much better representation of what to expect if you decide to jump into the housing market.
That’s step one; step two is getting the latest sales information, because home prices can and will change rapidly, and appraisals are based largely on recent comparable sales.
Last week, real estate information provider Redfin announced that it can now deliver 1.4 million near-real-time sales records.
“Comparative Market Analyses are one of the real estate industry’s ‘killer applications,’” said Michael Smedberg, leader of Redfin’s query & statistics team, in a press release.
“But they’re often shrouded in mystery; agents have direct access to data such as prices and photos for just-sold homes, but buyers rarely do.”
“Without that direct access, consumers have had to rely on the expertise and availability of their agent, and this in turn made it hard to figure out on their own what to offer or ask for a listing.”
Previously, consumers could only access data based on public records that Redfin claims is delayed between two to eight weeks, at which time home prices could change by as much as 5%.
Going forward, you can access sales information via MLS-powered records within 15 minutes of a property being taken off the market by clicking on the “recently sold” tab in neighborhood, city, and region views on Redfin.
So if you’re in the market to buy or sell a home, you may want to keep an eye on this handy tool. It could help you make an offer for a home, set the right listing price, or gauge when home prices will rise in your neighborhood.