What is Your Home Worth?
CMA's
are about facts which can be qualified and quantified. The CMA is
typically designed to give quick capsules of information such as number
of bedrooms and baths, approximate square footage, size of major rooms,
amenities such as fireplaces and pools, age of the home, property taxes,
listing agent contact information and more.
CMA's can include homes that
are currently for sale and those which have recently sold. They can go
back in time as long ago as a year or a month or week ago. CMA's can
cover areas as narrow as one or two streets surrounding your home, or as
broad as an entire subdivision.
What is not included in the
CMA are those factors that affect perception, and that is the key
difference between why one home with identical features will ultimately
command a higher price than its twin. Perception alters reality, and
this is a crucial consideration in understanding the buying and selling
process and the value of the CMA. Much of a home's value will ultimately
be determined by the emotional impact it has on buyers. These emotions
are based on subjective elements such as drive-up appeal, interior dec
or, colors, views from the windows, light, darkness, room flow, and
hundreds of other factors.
At the end of each home's
information on the CMA report there will be a brief statement provided
by the listing agent. This statement is usually a combination of fact
and subjective opinion, and will generally cover selling restrictions or
selling points. It could be anything from "seller's agent must be
present at all showings" to "kitchen and master bath completely
remodeled in 1997" to "Charming! Must see!" (Keep in mind that Realtors
are salespeople, self-employed and have individual styles of marketing
and that some will be better at writing CMA reports than others.)
For privacy reasons the CMA
that is offered for public consumption does not list every piece of
information that has been obtained by the seller's agent. It will give
the what, when, where, but it won't give the who (the seller's identity)
and the why (why the home is being put up for sale.) The reasons are
two-fold, to protect the seller's privacy and to keep from inadvertently
giving the buyer an advantage in a distress situation.
The CMA is clearly a selling
tool, but like any tool, it doesn't work very well by itself. It takes a
skilled person to be able to use it. For this reason, the CMA will
always need to be interpreted by a professional or with complete
objectivity by the seller or buyer.
Remember that the CMA is also a
buying tool; it is taken just as seriously by the buyer and his or her
agent. As you and your agent are going to use the CMA to ask the highest
possible price for your home, the buyer is going to use it to find
reasons to either choose or eliminate your home, and to arrive at the
lowest price possible.
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