There are three types of CMAs available to homeowners in our market.
The first is one you might be familiar with—the automated valuation model (or AVM). The cool thing about AVMs is they’re extremely fast and extremely convenient. You can actually do the AVMs you might’ve seen in the past on our website www.boisecma.com. You might have also seen these on other websites like Zillow and Trulia.
The downside to AVMs is they’re usually only 75% to 80% accurate, depending on your area. This is because they don’t know things like your home’s condition or if you’ve made any improvements to it. Also, since Idaho is a non-disclosure state, they don’t have any home sale data.
The listing walkthrough is the most accurate CMA you can get.
The second type is a generic market analysis that we would help you with. When you go to our website and get your automated valuation, we’ll give you a call, ask you some questions, and see if we can help you any further. Maybe you’re looking to refinance and you need to know exactly what your home is worth because it needs to have a certain amount of equity. Or perhaps you’re looking to sell your home.
In either case, being only 75% accurate isn’t good enough. For a $100,000 property, an analysis from an AVM would be somewhere between $75,000 and $125,000. That’s a pretty big gap. Just by following up with you and asking you some quick questions over the phone, our generic market analysis can land within 10% of your home’s true value without us even stepping foot in your house.
The third type of CMA is the listing walkthrough. This happens after we’ve called you and we find out you need an even more accurate valuation. What we do is schedule 10 to 20 minutes to do a walkthrough of your home to see what it looks like and if any repairs need to be made. From there, we’ll be able to give you a very accurate valuation. Depending on the area and market you’re in, this type of CMA can come within a couple thousand dollars of your home’s true value.
If you’d like a free CMA, don’t forget to head over to our website. If you have any other questions about CMAs, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d be glad to help you.