Home $weet Home: How Much Is Your Home Worth?

New cabinets and hardwood floors are some of the first things you notice at this home on White Castle Drive in Mobile. 

David Aldous gives me a tour of his home, this very home.  David is part of a Coast Guard family and they have to move in a few months.  They've done several home improvements to make it a hot property.

“We've done them all with the mindset as trying to make everything about this home as appealing as a new home would be,” says pilot David Aldous.  The asking price is $264,900.  For all the work they've done, they say it's a fair price.  What happens to other homes in the neighborhood can affect your home value. 

“If a neighborhood has had an excessive number of foreclosures or short sales it would hurt home value, but one or two--not so much,” says the Aldous family’s realtor Melanie Susman.  Some good news for the Aldous family, two homes in the neighborhood sold in the range of the asking price meaning their home value is right where they want it.  Housing prices have fallen dramatically in recent years; some are calling it a lost decade of home prices with values back to 2002 levels.

“It is what it is, we have to work with it and move forward, there are some positive things,” says Prudential Managing Broker Joe Rogers.  There are low interest rates and it's still a good time to buy a home--but nobody really knows if we've hit the bottom.

“Wow, you don't really know when the bottom is until they go up, but I believe we're pretty much at the bottom,” says Susman.  To find out your home's value you could use online calculators, but the results give prices that vary wildly.  A realtor gives you comps--the prices comparable nearby homes sell for--one of the leading factor in home value.

“We look at the homes that have sold, over the last six months to a year in the neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhood we take that information along with the current active listings,” says Susman.  As for when prices will come back--Daniel Dennis with Robert’s Brothers says we have to re-think how we talk about real estate recovery

“Because coming back doesn't mean what it did in 2005 2006--we're talking about a health market where supply more closely reaches demand,” says Dennis.  “If it is priced correctly you're looking at 90 percent all the way up to your asking price right now.”  The Aldous family is pouring money into their home to keep the value up and keep it competitive.  We're in an odd place-- there are too many homes for sale, too few buyers, tougher loan requirements, but interest rates are low but that's not enough to get a flood buyers.  No matter what a realtor, online calculator or tax assessment says, the only true measure of your home’s value is what someone else is willing to pay for it.