What is your property worth?

To determine how much your property is worth, you must take into account location, size, age and extras.

The next step is to find homes with features similar to yours and check how much they have sold for. Looking in real estate agents’ windows, or searching the past property sales databases on the Internet will give you a good indication of how much other home owners are asking for their properties in your area. But remember, these prices may not accurately reflect the price at which the homes are eventually sold.

Remember that changes in the state of the economy and the property market may affect the value of your home. Ask your real estate agent how the sale of your home may be affected by:

• Fluctuations in interest rates;
• Property availability;
• Buyer demand; and
• Market opinions and valuations.

Not confident that you can come up with a good estimate of how much your property is worth? Your first step should be to obtain a market opinion from a real estate agent. Real estate agents will inspect your home and offer an estimate of its worth based on a working knowledge of the local property market and recent sales prices. There is no obligation to engage the agent who gives the market opinion, and many who intend to sell property obtain more than one opinion.

This info courtesy of the Real Estate Institute of Australia