Selling your home in New Hampshire
If you've checked what your home is worth online, you already have a number in your head. It's probably wrong. Pricing a home correctly starts with a comparable-sales report: recent closed sales of homes like yours, adjusted for the ways they differ.
The estimate problem
Why the online number isn't the real one
Zillow's Zestimate and tools like it build their number from public records and past sales, run through a model that's never set foot inside your home. The company calls it an estimate. Most homeowners treat it as settled fact.
The gap gets worse the longer it's been since anything on your street sold. It gets worse again once your home is the one about to list, since the model now has even less current data to work with. Either way, it's the wrong tool for pricing your home this month.
What I won't do is quote you a dollar figure on a website. What I will do is build you a report from real closed sales and walk you through every line of it.
The better tool
How a comparable-sales report works
- Select the comps. Recent closed sales that match your home's location, size, age, and condition as closely as possible. Active listings and asking prices don't count, since neither one is what a buyer actually paid.
- Adjust for differences. A finished basement, a new roof, a two-car garage, a busy road. Each difference between the comp and your home gets a reasoned adjustment, and I show you each one.
- Read the market's direction. Pending sales and current competition show where things are heading, so the price reflects what's happening right now.
Questions
What sellers ask me
Why might an online estimate be so different from what I'd actually get?
Online tools are built to be generic. They have to work for every house in the model at once, so your renovations, your layout, and your specific street live outside what the data can capture. A comp report is built around your home specifically, which is why the number tends to move once someone actually looks.
Isn't my town's assessed value a better reference than an algorithm?
Not really, and for a similar reason: it's built for taxes and runs on its own reassessment schedule, often well behind the market. Only a comp report is built to answer what a buyer would pay you this month.
What will selling cost me?
Sellers customarily pay half of the NH real estate transfer tax ($0.75 per $100 of the sale price), the brokerage commission, any concessions you agree to during negotiations, and prorated property taxes through the closing date. I'll lay out a net sheet before you list so you know what you walk away with.
When should I list?
Spring is the traditional answer. Well-prepared homes sell in every season in NH, and thin winter inventory can work in a seller's favor. The better question is when the house is ready and your next step is planned, and that's worth an actual conversation.