Using Your Home’s History To Find Its Current Value

Everyone should know the value of their home; its one of the first rules of ownership. However, finding out the true value of your home is not nearly as easy as just deciding that you SHOULD know. There are many ways to go about figuring out how much your home is worth:
- look back at your recent property tax reports and find your home;’s value based on the given percentage
- ask a Realtor to estimate your home’s worth
- hire a professional home appraiser.
While the professionally acquired value will be the most accurate it will also be the most expensive. The internet offers a variety of free home appraisals that are just a click away, and will give you a quick, rough estimate of your home’s worth.

A website such as ‘Zillow’ can tell you the value your house has been appraised at in the past, and as such you can estimate a current value. This amount comes from just entering your street address. Also, you will have the option of entering various repairs and remodeling you may have done to your home. Zillow will then do a quick search to find the cost of those remodels/repairs that were done in your arrea, and add that in to our home’s estimated value.

Homegain, another website which offers free appraisals, presents the user with a form for the user to enter their information such as:
- address
- the size of the house (acreage, dimensions of rooms, etc.)
- number of stories
- number of bathrooms/bedrooms.

‘Value my House’ then sends this information to a professional home apprasier who will look it over and evaluate your home remotely. After this, you will be sent a preliminary report of your home.

Although these websites are not as thorough and accurate as an on-site visit from a home appraiser, they offer quick and easy rough estimates on your home. The bonus of the fact that they are free means that any homeowner can check the value of their home from many different sources.