How much is my house worth?

Last updated August 31, 2026

By Kurt Mellinger, Principal Agent, Ascension Estates at Equity Union Real Estate. DRE #02238998.

Your house is worth what a buyer will sign for it. That is the whole answer, and you only learn it by going to market. Every number you can get before that is an estimate, and each kind of estimate is built for a different job. Learn what each one is for and you will know how much to trust it.

Four kinds of numbers get attached to a house. Take them in order, from the cheapest to the most real.

Where do home value numbers come from?

1. The online estimate

An automated valuation model, an AVM, is a formula. It reads public records and recent nearby sales and prints a number. It has never been inside your house. It cannot see your kitchen, your view, your lot line or your deferred maintenance.

Zillow's own published figures tell you how much to trust it. For homes already listed for sale, the median error is around 2 percent. For homes that are not listed, the median error is around 7 percent. Your home sits in the second group while you are just checking. On a seven figure house, a 7 percent median miss is a six figure swing, and half of homes miss by more than the median. We took that whole story apart in our Zestimate accuracy article, including the time Zillow's own CEO sold his house far below his own company's estimate.

Use an AVM for one thing only. It is a rough starting point. Never price a sale off it, and never turn down an offer because a website says your house is worth more.

2. The CMA

A comparative market analysis is the number an agent brings to your kitchen table. The agent pulls recent closed sales that resemble your house, adjusts for the differences, and lands on a recommended price range. A good CMA is the most useful estimate you can get before listing, because a human who has seen your house built it.

An honest CMA has three marks. Check for all of them.

• It is built on closed sales, with addresses you can look up. Asking prices are wishes. Closed sales are evidence.
• The comps actually match. Same neighborhood, same side of the boulevard, same school boundary, similar lot and condition. Every adjustment is explained in plain words.
• It is a range with reasoning, and the reasoning survives your questions. A single confident number with no trail behind it is a guess wearing a suit. Some agents also inflate the number to win the listing. Trace every price back to the sales it came from before you sign anything.

3. The appraisal

An appraisal is a formal valuation by a licensed appraiser. In a normal sale it arrives during escrow, ordered by the buyer's lender. Understand who it serves. The appraisal's job is to confirm the house is worth enough to secure the loan the bank is about to make. It protects the lender. It happens after you already have a signed price, and it can hold that price up or knock it down. Read how appraisals work when you sell before you get to escrow, because the appraisal is where an overpriced contract comes apart.

4. The market itself

The only real answer. You list, buyers walk through, and one of them signs. Everything above is an attempt to predict this moment. The first ten days on market tell you more about your home's value than any estimate ever will, which is also why pricing right on day one matters so much.

What moves value that owners underweight?

Owners think hardest about the house. Buyers pay hardest for the location, and location works at a much finer grain than the town name.

The school boundary. Two similar houses a few streets apart can sit in different school attendance zones, and buyers with children pay for the zone, every time. Check which boundary your address is actually in before you price. Boundaries are lines on a map, and streets near the line surprise people in both directions.

The city line. Which city your parcel sits in changes what a sale costs, and buyers of expensive homes price that in. Woodland Hills is the local example we see most. It is part of the City of Los Angeles, so a sale there carries the Los Angeles city transfer tax, and above the city's thresholds, Measure ULA. Calabasas is a few minutes up the road, and a sale there pays the county rate only. Two houses at the same price can face very different costs to sell, and buyers at these prices know it. Our closing costs article breaks down the full mechanics. Know which side of the line you are on before you set a number.

Lot, light and noise. A house backing open space and a house backing the freeway can look identical in a spreadsheet. Buyers stand in the backyard and hear the difference in about ten seconds. Formulas miss this. Comps chosen carefully catch it.

What do owners overweight?

Upgrades. You remember what the kitchen cost. The buyer only sees what it is worth to them, and big projects rarely return what they cost at resale. A dated kitchen gets priced down by more than the remodel would cost, because buyers charge for the hassle of living through one. A fresh remodel rarely gets priced up by its full receipt. Count your upgrades honestly, and keep the receipts anyway, because they matter for your taxes later even when the market shrugs.

Sentiment. Twenty years of family dinners are worth everything to you and nothing to a buyer. That sounds harsh. Accept it early and you will price well. Fight it and your listing will sit while the market tells you the same thing slowly and expensively.

What the neighbor asked. The house down the street listed high and sat. Its asking price is one owner's opinion. Only its eventual closing price is evidence.

Why does "worth" change with how you sell?

One house carries three different numbers, depending on the exit you choose. Get all three before you decide anything.

We price all three exits for every seller, list on the open market, take a verified cash offer, or wait with a plan. The right answer depends on what you need, and you can only choose well with all three numbers in front of you.

One honest limitation. Nobody, including us, can tell you your exact value from a desk. Any number produced without a walkthrough carries real error, and the market moves while you wait. Treat every estimate on this page as a starting position, and treat the first ten days of a well priced listing as the truth.

Get your starting position from people who do this on your streets every week. The home value report gives you a projected list price for your address, your net after every cost, and a real cash offer range. No cost, and no one calls you unless you ask.