Why A Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) Is Important

One of our passions at Elite Properties is publishing real estate data you can use -- without hassling you to register for it. However, we do think that if you're making a decision about buying or selling real estate, or even if you're considering refinancing or are in some other situation where you need to know the value of your home, you should have the benefit of a professionally prepared CMA, rather than relying solely on market data you find on a web site (yes, including ours!).

The Limitations of Zillow and other "Online Valuation Systems"

There are a number of reasons for this. In the first place, even if you teach a computer everything there is to know about the market by plugging in all the latest numbers, and even assuming the computer has the right program to crunch these numbers correctly (which often is not the case) computers can't yet visit your home to see how it compares to other homes that have listed or sold in your area that are similar.

In the military they call this "needing boots on the ground" -- someone who is on site to see what is happening. That's why we always tell clients that even if we do a CMA for them, the numbers are likely to be significantly inaccurate if we don't see your home.

Indeed, in most cases, "running the comparables" on the computer is the easy part -- what's more of an art than a science is making adjustments to the comparables based on your specific property. This is why there has been so much discussion lately about how wildly inaccurate the popular online "Automated Valuation Systems" are. These systems suffer not only from not being able to see your home, but also from not being able to "evaluate" the data as a human being would.

The Limits of Market Updates and Statistics

Much as we love publishing market data for our readers to enjoy, this data is even harder to interpret accurately when it comes to pricing an individual home than the numbers that online valuation systems provide. Let's take one famous example: Say you have a 1800 square foot home and you look in your market area and find that the average home is 2500 square feet and sells for $500,000. Using some simple math, you work that out to $200 per square foot. Now let's say you multiply that number by 1800 square feet, and reason that your home is worth $360,000. Easy, right?

Wrong! You probably just lost a lot of money, because the bigger a home is, the less it fetches per square foot (because either way there's land underneath that has a fixed value). By plugging in an average value for homes in your area that weren't really comparable to yours, you may have underestimated the value of your home by about $20,000 to $60,000.

I don't know about you, but if I can get an opinion that can save me even $1,000, that's a lot of money to my way of thinking -- let alone tens of thousands of dollars. And if I can get that opinion without cost or obligation, I'm all over that. So why not find out what you don't know before it hurts you, by ordering a free CMA. And please, don't worry about it. We hate "closers" as much as you do -- the point is to provide you with a service and if we can be of assistance, so much the better.

Order a CMA

Get a free, professional evaluation of the value of your home. Don't trust the value of your biggest investment to a computer.

Please Don't Guess

We can't stress this enough. Even if you don't get a CMA from us, please do yourself a favor and get a professional opinion from another Realtor® or appraiser. Figuring out property values is deceptively "easy" looking, but if you get it wrong, you'll either waste time or lose money.