[M04/S05] Three Major Factors affecting Real Estate Values

When it comes to pricing your home, three major factors affecting real estate values:

• Location
• Quality
• Market Condition

To evaluate your home’s location, ask yourself how far it is from schools, grocery stores, destinations, and other local amenities. How accessible are highways and public transportation? Also, how close is it to nuisances? Is your home next door to a gas station, or located on or within earshot of a really busy street or freeway? When looking for similar properties to help figure out what your home is worth, it’s important to first look for homes that have a location of a similar quality to yours, accounting for both positive and negative factors.

Next, consider the home’s quality. Does it suffer from any deferred maintenance? Has the landscaping been kept up? Has it kept up with the times in terms of interior style? How long has it been since the kitchen and bathroom were updated? Does it have dual pane windows and recessed lighting? Central forced air heat or electric baseboard heat? Does it have an open, flowing floor plan or does it have an older, choppy floor plan with lots of small rooms? Is there a master suite, do the bedrooms have walk-in closets? What’s the parking situation, two car garage or is the only parking in the street?  These are all important factors to keep in mind when looking to compare your home to others.

Finally, assess current market conditions before listing your home. How are interest rates trending? Are they rising, making home buying harder, or dropping, making home buying easier and more affordable? How many similar homes in your area are on the market, and how long is it taking for these homes to sell? Is inventory increasing, or decreasing? What is the sales-to-list-price ratio for homes which have sold?

By assessing your home’s location and quality, as well as the trend of the current market, you will be best positioned to sell your home for the best price within the optimal timeframe. There are, obviously, a lot of variables here – and the value that any given real estate market places on those variables differs from town to town, so there’s no formula which can be used to accurately price in the differences in these factors. However, just by being aware of the factors which drive price differences will help you better understand at what price your home should be listed at.  Remember, while some of these factors may matter little to you, they will matter to buyers to varying degrees.

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