What's my house woth?

Question

I have a property in Carbondale, IL which I bought in 2013 for $89k. I've been renting it out to a friend since 2018, and would like to sell it to him. He's new to home ownership (this would be his first house purchase). I want to give him a fair deal (I don't want to take advantage of him neither do I want to give him the property), but I'm not sure how to evaluate the value. Zillow says it's worth $90k. Carbondale is not a "hot" location, but I'm surprised it's only appreciated a little over 1% in the last 8 years... what tools do you use for running your own comps?

Jamie Derasmo · Answer

Hi Curran! Don’t trust Zillow for true values, it’s not accurate in any way. It seems like you want it to be an off market deal and aren’t looking to make the max profit you can by listing. In this case, you can google “just sold“ and your town/city, most likely it’ll bring you to realtor.com. You have to make sure to pay attention to the type of property, the radius around, if it’s a densely populated area, do only a half mile to mile, and make sure to only use comparable sized homes.

I think the easiest route would be for you both to agree on an appraiser, hire that person to get a true estimate. It’s an upfront cost (varies with market- in my market it’s around $525) but it would show you your home value versus homes recently sold. If he’s financing, your friend would most likely have to pay for it again because the lender likes the appraiser of their choosing. Good luck!

Curran D Bishop · Answer

Just noticed I failed to use an "r" in "worth"...