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I'm trying to access information that will allow me to create a "do it myself" CMA.
Can anybody tell me whether there are public websites which will provide me with recent real estate sales in my local area, with list price and selling price information? Ideally, the information would also include detailed descriptions of the listing, with age, SF, etc.
The county tax office has some information - it includes selling price only though and there is no detailed information available except the address.
Sure. First you must take all the classes a licensee needs. Take the state test. Fill out an application with the real estate commission. Get a real estate license and join the board
The easiest way to do it, assuming they'd actually allow it... would be to contact a title/escrow office. They give us access to title profiles which show the entire public history of a property, and generally notate 10 other houses that would be considered comparable. Generally there's 1-3 out of the 10 noted that are real comparable houses.
They might offer you access for free if you tell them you plan to use them, or they might offer you access with a price per pull, or a monthly fee. First American might offer something to the public... would check with them first.
Just curious, do you want the CMA for marketing purposes for a FSBO or for your own personal research to investigate a listing price?
Is there a reason why you are unwilling to contact an agent who can pull this info for you (for free) in a matter of minutes from a system he/she pays to access?
The CMAs I provide includes the list and selling prices as well as clickable links to the MLS listing with all the tax office data you mentioned. It would sure save you a lot of time!
We have used Housefront.com as well as the town website. On the town website we can get property info such as acreage as well as house number and owner. Then we use google maps to get a satelite view of the house and surrounding areas. Then we use housefront.com to give us the purchase price, date of sale, and owner of house. You have to sign up for housefront-free-and it takes time as you need to enter each address separately but it has helped us.
My Realtor has presented me with an offer that currently stands at $13K less than my asking price. I have countered with $6K off the asking price and the prospective buyer won't come any higher. My Realtor is pressuring me to take the deal because it's the best deal I'm going to get, blah blah blah, but I don't know about that.
I have asked her for the CMA info - I don't understand why this isn't available to the public. She can obviously skew the information that she gives me to pressure me to take the deal.
It is available to the public. It's available through your county/city offices public records. It's not EASILY available to the public as it is to Realtors because we have systems in place so we can sort through the information easily and quickly. And we pay for that privilege.
You can go to her office and sit with her while she pulls the information up if you don't trust her. I don't know why you hired her if you don't, but, hey...water under the bridge.
My Realtor has presented me with an offer that currently stands at $13K less than my asking price. I have countered with $6K off the asking price and the prospective buyer won't come any higher. My Realtor is pressuring me to take the deal because it's the best deal I'm going to get, blah blah blah, but I don't know about that.
I have asked her for the CMA info - I don't understand why this isn't available to the public. She can obviously skew the information that she gives me to pressure me to take the deal.
I'd take the offer. The market is really bad these days. We got a lowball offer, too and in retrospect I wish we'd have taken it. Here we are almost two months later with no other offers and lost the one offer we did have ($14K less than asking) that would have only put us $3K under our "worse-case scenario" price. I blame our agent because she didn't have good negotiating skills. Please take the offer if you can afford to!
I'm trying to access information that will allow me to create a "do it myself" CMA.
Can anybody tell me whether there are public websites which will provide me with recent real estate sales in my local area, with list price and selling price information? Ideally, the information would also include detailed descriptions of the listing, with age, SF, etc.
The county tax office has some information - it includes selling price only though and there is no detailed information available except the address.
The difficult part of your request is a public site for the original list price vs the sales price. You can go to county websites and recorded documents to find the sales price, yr built, and sq ftg. It's normally a lot of work, unless your county has some really great website that makes finding that information really easy. However coming up with the list price on those homes that have already sold would be difficult without access to the realtor-only version of the MLS. Also within that system would be the average % of sales price to purchase price.
While I understand your hesitation to accept your realtor's CMA (and yes, the CMA's can be skewed slightly), that is still your best bet for finding out the current market value (what buyers have been willing to pay for similar houses). The more homes your agent uses in the CMA, the less skewed the numbers.
Things to watch for on the CMA:
Make sure it's Sold's only.
Make sure they've closed within the past 6 months (9 - 12 months in a really slow, flat market)
Make sure the agent has used at least 5 or 6 comps.
Look over the homes and sales prices - are there any in the mix that you don't feel are a comp for yours (i.e. way too small, really needed repairs, etc.). Also watch for any home that sold way high or way low. That will skew the numbers. Size does matter You want a few homes that are slightly larger than yours and a few that are slightly smaller (within 15% of yours is ideal).
Lastly ask your agent for the stat on average % of sales price to list price. That stat should be available on the MLS. Each MLS software is different, so don't beat her up if she can't provide you with that. It's really the CMA that's ultra important.
Keep in mind your agent has a fiduciary responsibility to respresent you to your best advantage. Unless you really have reason to think she wants you to shoot yourself in the foot on the price, then the figures she gives you should reflect the real picture of real estate activity in your area. If you're in one of these really, really slow markets, then she may tell you that getting any offer, even one that's 10% or less than asking price may be worth looking at seriously. If the offer you've received is in the 5%+/- of list price, that could be a very good offer, depending on your market.
the best evaluator we have found is: realestateabc.com
It takes into consideration the property location whereas most other sites look soley at tax records. You can adjust sliders to give a more accurate evaluation of the property too. Sliders include the market conditions from cold to hot, exterior, interior conditions, lot size, view, and noise in comparison to other properties in the nieghborhood.
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