Six Ways to Figure Out What Your House Is Worth

FROM THESTREET.COM:

Your house is worth only what someone else is willing to pay for it.

All other estimates and appraisals are merely educated guesses. But in a volatile market even settling on a ballpark figure isn't always straightforward.

Nationwide, housing prices are dropping rapidly, but not equally. Home prices in Jackson, Miss., plunged almost 17% in 2007, while prices in Yakima, Wash., swelled 18%, according to the National Association of Realtors.

No prescient source can put a value on your home—after all, many reputable sources ignored the Cassandras of the housing bubble. So the best way to get a reasonable estimate of your home's value before putting it on the market, getting home-equity lines of credit or assessing your financial situation may be to get as many guesses as possible.

In the end, you won't have captured your home's price to the nearest penny, but here are steps to get a reasonable idea of your house's worth:

1. Ask a Real-Estate Agent—or Agents

Lauren Lindsay, a Baton Rouge, La.-based fee-only financial adviser, recommends getting at least three real estate agents to estimate the value of your home before putting it on the market.

She practices what she preaches: In 2005 she asked three agents at what price they would list her Boston home before she put it on the market. She got three wildly different answers. The highest was about $50,000 more than the lowest—a difference of about 15% of the ultimate sale value of the house.

Lindsay priced the house at a little more than the middle estimate and sold the house within a day. She used the same strategy last June with her Baton Rouge home, with largely the same results.