Most pricing advice stops at "I run the comps." This page shows the work. It is the same method behind every assessment I send, written out so you can check it before you decide to work with me.
What I look at
I start with closed sales. What a neighbor is asking tells you what they hope for. What a neighbor closed at tells you what a buyer and a lender both agreed to, in writing, on a specific day.
Four cuts narrow the field.
The first is geography. I want sales close enough to share your streets, your block pattern, and your school assignment. I usually start at one mile and stay tighter when the streets allow it.
The second is recency. A sale from last month describes today's buyers better than a sale from last spring. How far back I go depends on the location and the property type. The window starts recent and stretches only as far as the comp set requires, and your assessment states the window it used.
The third is the house itself. Similar size, similar era, similar type. A 1920s bungalow does not price off a 2019 townhome two blocks away, even when the square footage lines up.
The fourth is the terms. A sale between relatives or a trustee sale can close well under what an ordinary buyer would have paid. Those come out of the set, and I tell you which ones I pulled and why.
If the four cuts leave me too few sales to see a pattern, I widen one of them and name the one I widened. Three solid comparable sales is my minimum before I will put a range on paper. A thin comp set is itself a fact about your market, and you should hear it rather than have it smoothed over.
What I adjust for
No two houses match. Adjustments are how the gap gets closed:
- Square footage above grade, with finished basement space counted separately
- Condition and updates: a kitchen done last year and a kitchen done in 1998 are not the same kitchen
- Lot size, and what the lot backs onto
- Garage and parking
- Position on the block: a busy arterial prices differently than an interior street two doors in
- Date of sale, when the market has moved since it closed
Adjustments are where an assessment stops being arithmetic and starts being judgment. So I write mine down and show them to you. If you disagree with one, say so. Sometimes you are right, because you know what the furnace has been doing and I do not.
Where the numbers come from, and when they refresh
Every closed sale I use comes from the MLS, the database licensed agents list and search in. I pull a fresh copy weekly, so the sales behind your assessment track the record within a few days.
I do not price from public portal data. It lags the record, and it misses the detail that moves a price in this county, starting with finished basement square footage.
Every number I hand you carries the date I pulled it. A number with no date on it is a guess wearing a suit. Mine will have a date.
Why the answer is a range
Nobody can name the exact figure your specific home will close at before it goes on the market. A range is the accurate form of the answer. It tells you the band the evidence supports and leaves room for what a spreadsheet cannot see, starting with how the house shows in person.
For scale, look at what the big portals publish about their own accuracy. Redfin's estimate page reports a median error of 7.27 percent for off market homes, against 1.85 percent for homes already listed, figures pulled from its published accuracy page in July 2026. The other portals publish similar numbers. On a $600,000 Salt Lake County home, 7 percent is about $42,000 in either direction. That is a wide band to plan a move around. It is also the median, so half of all homes land further out than that.
Older housing stock is where those models struggle most. Two bungalows on the same street, same footprint, same year, can sit a full renovation apart, and nothing in the public record says so. Sugar House and Holladay are full of that pattern. It is also the part I can see by standing in the room.
My range is narrower than the portals' band, and I will tell you why it lands where it does. For a listing price you can defend, I will need to walk through the home in person. Photographs undersell some houses and flatter others.
What you get, and how fast
- The comparable closed sales I used, with addresses and sale dates, so you can look them up yourself
- The range, and the reasoning that produced it
- The adjustments I made, written out
- What is selling in your price band right now, and what is sitting
It comes back within one business day. If your home is unusual enough that I need longer, I will tell you that on day one rather than go quiet.
What this is, and what it costs
This is a market analysis I prepare myself. It is not an appraisal. When a buyer finances the purchase, the lender orders its own separate report from a separate licensed professional, and that report is the one the loan relies on.
The assessment is free and carries no obligation. Free applies to the assessment itself. Brokerage services are paid at closing, under a written agreement we would both sign before I represent you.
See what your home could sell for
Send me the address. I will pull the closed sales from your streets and send the range back within one business day.
See what my home could sell for