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Real Estate Comps 101: Finding Comps To Determine Property Value

How can you find real estate comps in your area to determine the potential appraised value of a property?

Knowing your property value is essential to making smart and profitable investment choices. Investors can get a better handle on this by knowing their ‘comps’. Those are comparable property sales. So, where do you find them?

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1. Third-Party Online Estimators

Zillow is one of the most commonly used online home value tools. It is fast and easy to use. It is also one of the most flawed. In fact, Zillow has finally been hit with a major class-action lawsuit over its faulty Zestimate tool. Online home value estimators can help to give a fast, rough estimate of value, but are frequently wrong. Zillow or other sourcing websites can be a good first step in qualifying a potential property, but should not be relied on when actually putting your money on the line.

2. Realtors

Real estate agents can be a great source of comparable information. They can save investors a lot of time, by pulling quality real estate comps. Some brokers will provide ‘BPOs’ (Broker Price Opinion) for a few hundred dollars, or less. Agents will typically help by providing free CMAs (Comparative Market Analysis). Just note that they do this often in hopes of winning your business, and aren’t going to work for free forever. Their findings can also be biased.

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3. The MLS

Another option is to go right to the realtors’ MLS (Multiple Listing Service) yourself. This can provide a lot of data on listed, sold, expired, and pending real estate comps. If you don’t have a real estate license and MLS membership, you can also use consumer-facing versions like Realtor.com.

4. Title Companies

One of the most important things to remember in finding comps is that asking prices are almost irrelevant. Sellers and agents aggressively overpriced properties for sale every day. What you want are actually sold comps. County public records can provide this data, and often online. Title companies will also have details on comps that have actually sold, and what concessions or special terms may be artificially influencing prices. They also know what transactions are in the pipeline to close soon.

5. Appraisers

Professional real estate appraisers are the go-to if you really want a solid figure you can bank on. You won’t typically want to splurge on the cost of a full appraisal for a property unless you are 100% sure you are buying it. However, appraisers and other data providers can also provide drive-by appraisals or an Automated Valuation Model  (AVM). AVM’s usually include tax assessors, sales history of a property, and how other properties in the area are stacking up.  

6. Drive-By

Whenever you can, you want to drive through the neighborhood for yourself. See what properties are for sale, and especially FSBOs (For Sale By Owner) which may not be on the MLS. This will also help in assessing real estate comps as you can see how many properties are up for rent, and call on signs.

Remember it is best not to rely on just one source for figuring comparables. Pooling many of these sources together can assist you in coming up with the best comps for your properties.

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TJ Lokboj

TJ Lokboj is an entrepreneur with a passion for adding value to the real estate investing industry through adopting digital transformation. Some of TJs companies have been featured in Yahoo Finance, Morningstar, Benzinga, and many other publications.

TJ is the managing partner of Holdfolio, a real estate investment firm that leverages a premier crowdfunding platform.

He is also a member of the Forbes real estate council and co-founded SyndicationPro, which is the #1 syndication management SaaS solution in the market today.

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Ready to invest in real estate?

We make real estate investing simpler, more transparent, and accessible to individual investors.