Everyone: Getting Comparables

Getting Comparables

Updated over a week ago

Determining the value of a property is one of the most important and elusive jobs real estate professionals face. In the end a willing buyer and seller will decide, but until that point understanding and leveraging comparables (aka comps) is your best chance at getting the value right. Even automated valuations like Zillow Zestimates use comps to determine their value estimates.

Whether you’re a Realtor helping a seller determine list price, an appraiser valuing a property for a lender, or an investor trying to determine what to pay, comps are key.

Recent Sale Comparables

Most evaluations of price focus on recent sales comps. The problem is which ones? Only PropertyRadar tags each comp as a regular market sale, a short sale, an REO or a flip, giving you insight on whether the sales price really represents fair market value.

Listing Comparables

While sales comps reign supreme on showing what buyers will pay, listing comps show you the competition, and give you some insight on the direction prices are headed. Let PropertyRadar automatically pick the best ones for you.

Neighbor Comparables

Neighbors as comps? You bet. Few homes can escape the limits on value imposed by the properties around them. Have a 6,000 square foot 5 bedroom home in a neighborhood of 1,500 square foot 3 bedroom homes? You’ll have a real challenge on your hands. Remember the old adage; buy the worst house in the best neighborhood? We make that easy.

Automatic Comparables

We automatically generate the best comps for every property using public records and proprietary algorithms. No more fixed ranges – plus or minus 1 bedroom, or plus or minus 200 sq ft – that will miss the very best comp if it happens to be 201 sq ft larger. We evaluate location, sale date, square footage, beds, baths, lot size, and more to find the best comps, and we score how well each matches so you know exactly where you stand.

Override Public Records

While we will automatically get the best comps based on public records about the property, you can easily override those values if public records or wrong, or the property has been improved.

Leverage Your Local Market Knowledge

We’ll find the best comps based on public records, but nothing beats your market knowledge when it comes to the final selection. Refine the results and remove comps that aren’t quite right until you’ve narrowed your results down to the very best ones!

Map View shows Geographic Outliers

When it comes to finding the best comps, public records aren’t enough. Does the property back to the ocean, or a freeway? Is it on the proverbial “wrong side of the tracks”? Seeing comps on the map, allows you to easily see which ones are best, and which ones simply need to be eliminated.

Chart View Shows Trends and Outliers

In every market there are occasionally deals that just don’t make sense, whether they sold unrealistically above or below market value, our chart view lets you easily see those outliers. Better yet, the chart shows the trend over time… are prices headed up? Or Down?

List View Brings Perspective

Our color coded list view shows the highs and lows and compares it all to your subject property so that you can easily get perspective on how well the comps you’ve chosen really match your subject property.

It All Adds Up

See exactly how the comps you select impact the value of your subject property. As you change the selected comps, we calculate the average dollars per square foot and apply it to your subject property.

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