Zillow’s Zestimate, the county’s assessed value, and your neighbor’s recent sale are three different numbers, and none of them is what your house would sell for today. That answer comes from comparable sales, adjusted for your home’s condition, lot, and features, and measured against what is selling in your price band this month.

Why online estimates miss

A Zestimate is a computer model built from public records and recent sales in your area. It does not know your kitchen was updated three years ago, that your lot backs up to open space, or that a shop building sits behind your house, worth thousands of dollars to the right buyer. In Grants Pass and the wider Rogue Valley, where a fixer, a mid-range family home, and a custom build can sit within a few hundred feet of each other, the gap between the model and the actual sale price tends to run wide. The county’s assessed value is a different problem: under Oregon’s Measure 50, assessed value growth is capped every year regardless of what the market does, so a home someone has owned for a decade can carry an assessed value tens of thousands of dollars below its market price. Neither number was built to answer your question.

What goes into your report

I run a full comparative market analysis: the sold comps in your immediate market, adjusted line by line for condition, square footage, lot size, and upgrades, using per-unit dollar figures. I check the current active competition in your price band and how fast it is moving, then cross-reference against MLS-level market data public sites cannot see: the exact count of active, pending, and sold listings in your specific price range. I pull the county’s assessed value and Real Market Value and Zillow’s Zestimate too, so you can see how each one compares with the comp-based number, and why. Zoning, easements, insurability, and anything about the property itself that could move price all get checked.

Everything in your complimentary CMA

Home data sites charge a monthly subscription for a report on your house. Everything those reports carry is in mine, at no cost, along with the work only a local broker does. I show every step so you can see exactly how your number was built.

• Every comp confirmed against the county recorder’s recorded sale price.
• Every adjustment for condition, square footage, lot size, and upgrades, priced with an actual dollar figure and shown in the table.
• A three-window market read, one year back, six months back, and the current quarter, so you see which direction your market is moving.
• Active, pending, and sold counts in your exact price band, pulled from my own MLS access. Zillow and Redfin do not publish that.
• Your Zestimate and the county’s assessed value and Real Market Value, reconciled against your comp-based number, so you know how they compare and why they differ.
• Your home’s ownership and sale history from county records, and its value over time: what it sold for, and what it is worth now.
• Your tax history: assessed value, Real Market Value, and the annual bill.
• Recorded mortgages and liens on the property, and your estimated equity.
• Natural hazards for your exact address: landslide, earthquake, flood, wildfire, and radon, from the state’s own hazard maps.
• Zoning, easements, insurability, and any use restriction checked for your specific parcel.
• Your property’s building permit history, pulled directly from the county, so unpermitted work surfaces now instead of during a buyer’s inspection.
• The exact school your home is assigned to, pulled from the district’s boundary map.
• A clear read on any solar or energy system on the property, owned or leased, and what it does to your sale.
• A written net proceeds estimate: what you would walk away with at closing after commission, closing costs, and your mortgage payoff.
• A complimentary updated CMA any time in the next twelve months.

Whenever a property I have written a CMA for gets a professional appraisal, I log the result against my own number, so my process keeps calibrating against independent data.

How you get yours

Your Seller’s CMA is complimentary. Fill in your details below and I will call to gather a few specifics about your property, then put your full written report together: the comps, the adjustments, the market read, and a recommended price with the reasoning behind it. It is yours to keep, whether you list with me, list with someone else, or do nothing at all.

More questions: Is it a buyer’s or seller’s market right now? · How much does a real estate agent cost in Oregon? · Should I wait until the economy is better to sell my home?