What I really meant to say is that there is no way I can easily do comps manually like that. I would have to look at ALL sales in the entire town for the past 6 months to hope to find a few decent comps. To give you an example, I just bought a house here about 2 months ago and the appraiser had a hard time doing comps on this place. So it just seems like using the MLS system would be a lot quicker and easier than manually looking up every or almost every sale in the area over the past 6 months … with the MLS system you just type in the property address and click a few buttons. I can’t even use my house as a starting point because the properties I’m looking at are not in the same ballpark. So far what I’ve been trying to do is learn the area by seeing what’s for sale, driving by to see what they look like at that price, etc. What am I misssing here? Thanks!
Well I’ve been out there in the trenches for the last week, and having a blast. I think I’m going to like this a lot. I have a question though. I live in a very small town, with other very small towns surrounding it, and I’m trying to figure out the best way to get comps and figure out how much my subject properties are worth. I’ve tried at least a dozen websites but none of them seem to have any info on properties out here in my small town. So, now I’m thinking that I need to find a real estate agent or something and make friends with them. What’s my best bet at this point … I’m brand new to the area AND brand new to REI so I really have no clue what properties are worth around here. Technically I know how to do comps, but I just don’t know where to get the info from. Should I try to make friends with a realtor and get them to do my comps, or try to work out a deal with them where they let me use their MLS access or something like that?
I wouldn’t rely on a realtor for the comps. Find out where in your new area transactions are filed. I would check with the town assessors office, town clerks office. Perhaps the local courthouse It really depends on where you are located.
I’ve talked to the assessor and visited the clerks office … I can pull up information on a specific property and look at deeds in the “vault” but I don’t see how I can do comps using the information available there. This is a small town with not a whole lot of sales activity to begin with … it’s not like I can just glance at recent sales and find comps. What am I missing here? I hear what you’re saying about relying on someone else, but what if I could get access to the system the realtors use? I’ve seen it … and it pulls up comps automatically when you type in a property address and click a few buttons.