According to usnews.com, the housing market between 2025 and 2029 will likely experience slower increases in home prices and rents. Key factors shaping this will include the impacts of the pandemic's aftermath, the expansion of AI, and climate change costs, as well as potential shifts in immigration and tariffs. However, mortgage rates will play the biggest role in shaping the market. If rates remain high, home sales will primarily be driven by job and life changes. But if mortgage rates decline faster, pent-up demand could drive a return to more typical market volumes. As of mid-2024, nearly 86% of homeowners have mortgage rates below 6%, but this percentage is shrinking. The demand for homes could rise as more homeowners consider selling due to life changes such as job relocation or the need for more space. Renovation is also becoming an appealing option for those who are hesitant to sell in this environment. New home construction is another bright spot. With low existing home inventory, more buyers are considering newly built homes, making up around 30% of the housing inventory. Larger homebuilders are offering incentives like mortgage rate buydowns and covering closing costs to attract buyers. The real estate commission landscape is shifting as well. New rules from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) are changing how commissions are structured, especially for luxury homes. This could lead to more negotiation opportunities and transparency in transactions. As we look ahead, rising property taxes, home insurance, and maintenance costs will make the total cost of homeownership more significant. Homebuyers will need to factor in these costs, including HOA fees, which have been increasing. Despite these challenges, the demand for homes will remain strong, with a housing shortage expected to persist through the end of the decade, though supply will gradually improve. In summary, home prices are likely to see moderate growth from 2025 through 2029, with demand driven by life changes, new construction, and more accessible homebuying options as mortgage rates potentially ease. For more insights on the housing market and how to navigate upcoming changes, feel free to contact the Benson Group . We can help you make informed decisions for the years to come. Source: realestate.usnews.com

According to hillsborough.net, the rezoning of two town-owned sites marks a significant effort to meet the state-mandated goals for affordable housing under RHNA Cycle 6. This initiative aims to increase housing diversity while maintaining single-family zoning across private properties. Here's a concise overview of the plans: Tobin Clark Site Situated adjacent to the College of San Mateo, 20 acres of this 50-acre property will accommodate 100 multi-family housing units. These units will benefit educators, healthcare workers, and local staff: 44 units for Very Low Income 6 units for Moderate Income 50 units for Above Moderate Income Town Hall Campus This 2.5-acre site near Floribunda Avenue and El Camino Real is slated for 16 affordable units. These will cater primarily to seniors and local workers: 7 units  for Very Low Income (0–50% AMI) 9 units  for Low Income (50–80% AMI) Next Steps No developments have been approved yet. Community Visioning workshops will provide residents the opportunity to shape these projects through open dialogue. Embrace this progressive move towards inclusive housing while sustaining the town’s charm. Contact us to explore options today! Source: hillsborough.net

If you’re planning to move soon, you might be wondering if there’ll be more homes to choose from, where prices and mortgage rates are headed, and how to navigate today’s market. If so, here’s what the professionals are saying about what’s in store for this season. Odeta Kushi, Deputy Chief Economist, First American: “. . . it seems our general expectation for the spring is that we will see a pickup in inventory. In fact, that already seems to be happening. But it won’t necessarily be enough to satiate demand.” Lisa Sturtevant, Chief Economist, Bright MLS: “There is still strong demand, as the large millennial population remains in the prime first-time homebuying range.” Danielle Hale, Chief Economist, Realtor.com : “Where we are right now is the best of both worlds. Price increases are slowing, which is good for buyers, and prices are still relatively high, which is good for sellers.” Skylar Olsen, Chief Economist, Zillow: “There are slightly more homes for sale than this time last year, and there is still plenty of competition for well-priced houses. Buyers should prep their credit scores and sellers should prep their properties now, attractive listings are going pending in less than a month, and time on market will shrink in the weeks ahead.” Jiayi Xu, Economist, Realtor.com : “While mortgage rates remain elevated, home shoppers who are looking to buy this spring could find more affordable homes on the market than they saw at the same time last year. Specifically, there were 20.6% more homes available for sale ranging between $200,000 and $350,000 in February 2024 than a year ago, surpassing growth in other price ranges.” If you’re looking to sell, this spring might be your sweet spot because there just aren’t many homes on the market. Sure, inventory is rising, but it’s nowhere near enough to meet today’s buyer demand. That’s why they’re still selling so quickly. If you’re looking to buy, the growing number of homes for sale this spring means you’ll have more choices than this time last year. But be prepared to move quickly since there’ll be plenty of competition with other buyers. For expert guidance and support throughout your journey, reach out to Benson Group  when you're ready to take the next step towards finding your dream home. ---------- Source: keepingcurrentmatters.com

Compass has invested over $1 billion in technology that helps the real estate firm’s nearly 30,000 agents move from the earliest point of contacting a prospective client to closing a deal, all via one tech platform. “Our job is to help agents grow their businesses, make more money, save time, and create great experiences for their clients,” says Rory Golod, president of growth and communications at Compass. The investments by Compass, the nation’s largest brokerage by sales volume, include “Likely to Sell,” an artificial intelligence tool that analyzes prospective client leads and makes recommendations on who may soon be ready to sell their home. More recently, the company rolled out Compass AI, a chatbot tool that can help write listings for properties, marketing materials, and agent profiles. Agents can have thousands of contacts at their fingertips, Golod says, and conversation rates are often exceptionally low for traditional marketing tactics like email and social media. But Compass says that since Likely to Sell launched in the summer of 2020, nearly 8% of recommendations given through the CRM (customer relationship management) tool each month are listed on the market within 12 months. “We want to use AI to help an agent say, ‘If I’m going to reach out to someone, I want to reach out to the people who have the highest propensity to maybe transact,’” says Golod. There’s an estimated $180 billion in value that could be unlocked from the advancements of generative AI, according to McKinsey estimates. The industry could certainly benefit from such a jolt, as U.S. home sales declined to their lowest level in nearly 30 years in 2023 due to lofty mortgage rates and low inventory that has made home buying a lot more expensive. The industry is due for major disruption to commission fees after the National Association of Realtors struck a deal that could lead homebuyers and sellers to negotiate lower agent commissions. There is also a major problem with construction, because the nation just isn’t building enough new homes to meet demand. But there are a lot of complicating factors that make AI adoption within real estate especially difficult. Experts say there are massive amounts of unorganized data, ranging from leases to contracts, from investment documents to design plans. Construction operates on razor-thin margins. The median age of a real estate agent skews older than that of workers in most industries, and those in the sector are notoriously tech-averse. And the highly physical nature of the industry means many technology advancements are still in their relative infancy. “I would say, historically, real estate has always been a bit of a laggard, in terms of use of AI,” says Alex Wolkomir, a partner at McKinsey. Wolkomir says commercial real estate is further along than residential when it comes to AI adoption. The top challenge he thinks the industry faces is making sure members of its workforce—construction workers, real estate agents, designers—are properly trained and understand the capabilities of the AI tools they are given. He is encouraged by some forward momentum in the industry’s AI journey over the past five years. “I think a lot of the [generative] AI use cases are kind of opening up new areas that are very valuable to real estate,” says Wolkomir. Yao Morin, chief technology officer at JLL, says one of the challenges that commercial real estate faces is the abundance of unstructured data, in the form of leases, contracts, and invoices. “I believe in this era of AI, the barrier of using AI will continue to go lower,” says Morin. “And then you ask yourself, ‘If using AI is not a competitive advantage, then what is?’ The answer is absolutely your data.” Last year, the company unveiled JLL GPT, a generative AI model that provides insights to clients based on JLL’s proprietary market research, alongside externally available market data. Morin says 20% of JLL’s 103,000-person workforce is using JLL GPT on a weekly basis because the technology enables staff to complete repetitive tasks more efficiently. JLL is also using generative AI to better predict building-maintenance needs, research investment opportunities, and implement sustainability initiatives. “If you think about classic AI, it takes a higher learning curve to understand it and be able to trust the results,” says Morin. “But with generative AI, it is much easier for us to adopt and for people to see the value.” The startup Higharc has launched a homebuilding automation platform that aims to turn home construction into a faster and more affordable process. “What we do is make data available about houses that are going to be built,” says Higharc CEO Marc Minor. “And when I say, ‘make data available,’ I mean every part and piece of the building, and where it belongs, and when it needs to be built, and who’s responsible for that segment of the building. We control all of that information in an automatic way.” Last month, Higharc raised $53 million in Series B funding, including from retailer Home Depot, the venture arm of France’s Schneider Electric, and others across the construction, building products, and manufacturing industries. Minor says the greatest possibilities lie in both improving the way homes are built alongside access to data from distributors and suppliers. “If you build the right software layer to systematically change housing, in terms of the designs of the houses, that gives you the capability to more easily understand the ways to leverage the hardware side,” says Minor. Prologis Ventures, founded in 2016, has invested $250 million into over 45 supply-chain and logistics-focused startups, including AI-enabled companies like TestFit, Altana AI, and Logiwa. “People have always used intuition as a way to make real estate decisions,” says Will O’Donnell, managing partner of Prologis Ventures. “But there’s just reams and reams of data that if you could pull together and do analysis on [it], you would be able to have better insight to make that decision.” Prologis, as an example, uses TestFit’s AI to better judge the feasibility of new warehouse sites. Information on specific zoning regulations, environmental conditions, transportation around a site, and labor can be integrated to improve decision-making. TestFit can also produce dozens of project renderings in as little as an hour and will make suggestions based on past metrics. “As a company, one of the things that we’ve been spending a lot of time on is, what information is important to our customers when they make a decision?” asks O’Donnell. “What’s important to them as they’re driving their business, and how do we empower both our people and our customers to better understand that information?” Augmenta, meanwhile, automates designs for electrical systems, meaning all the parts and pieces inside a building that take electricity from one point and deliver it to another. “The process of ideation to the full, detailed plan is fraught with challenges,” says Francesco Iorio, cofounder and CEO of Augmenta. The design process, Iorio explains, is extremely complex, because to go from sketch, to a list of parts, to construction, there is a long list of considerations before there’s an actionable plan to construct. The greatest benefit of AI, he says, is to automate the preconstruction phase for electrical systems. “Giving them the ability to design at the highest level of detail, with cost and time being at the forefront very early in the design stages, allows people to experiment and answer those questions that would be costly to answer downstream,” Iorio says. ----------------- Source: Fortune

According to keepingcurrentmatters.com, going into 2023, there was a lot of talk about a possible recession that would cause the housing market to crash. Some in the media were even forecasting home prices would drop by as much as 10-20% — and that might have made you feel a bit unsure about buying a home. But here’s what actually happened: home prices went up more than usual. Brian D. Luke, Head of Commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, explains: “Looking back at the year, 2023 appears to have exceeded average annual home price gains over the past 35 years.” The big takeaway? Home prices almost always go up. As an article from Forbes says: “. . . the U.S. real estate market has a long and reliable history of increasing in value over time.” In fact, since 1980, the only time home prices dropped was during the housing market crash (shown in red in the graph above). Fortunately, the market today isn’t like it was in 2008. For starters, there aren’t enough available homes to meet buyer demand right now. On top of that, homeowners have a tremendous amount of equity, so they’re on much stronger footing than they were back then. That means there won’t be a wave of foreclosures that causes prices to fall. The fact that home values went up every single year except those four in red is why owning a home can be one of the smartest moves you can make. When you’re a homeowner, you own something that typically becomes more valuable over time. And as your home’s value appreciates, your net worth grows. So, if you’re financially stable and prepared for the costs and expenses of homeownership, buying a home might make a lot of sense for you. For expert guidance and support throughout your journey, reach out to Benson Group  when you're ready to take the next step towards finding your dream home. ---------- Source: keepingcurrentmatters.com

For expert guidance and support throughout your journey, reach out to Benson Group  when you're ready to take the next step towards finding your dream home.

According to recent data from Fannie Mae, almost 1 in 4 people still think home prices are going to come down. If you’re one of the people worried about that, here’s what you need to know. A lot of that fear is probably coming from what you’re hearing in the media or reading online. But here’s the thing to remember. Negative news sells. That means, you may not be getting the full picture. You may only be getting the clickbait version. As Jay Thompson, a Real Estate Industry Consultant, explains: “Housing market headlines are everywhere. Many are quite sensational, ending with exclamation points or predicting impending doom for the industry. Clickbait, the sensationalizing of headlines and content, has been an issue since the dawn of the internet, and housing news is not immune to it.” Here’s a look at the data to set the record straight. Home Prices Rose the Majority of the Past Year Case-Shiller releases a report each month on the percent of monthly home price changes. What do you notice when you look at this graph? It depends on what color you’re more drawn to. If you look at the green, you’ll see home prices rose for the majority of the past year. But, if you’re drawn to the red, you may only focus on the two slight declines. This is what a lot of media coverage does. Since negative news sells, drawing attention to these slight dips happens often. But that loses sight of the bigger picture. Here’s what this data really says. There’s a lot more green in that graph than red. And even for the two red bars, they’re so slight, they’re practically flat. If you look at the year as a whole, home prices still rose overall. It’s perfectly normal in the housing market for home price growth to slow down in the winter. That’s because fewer people move during the holidays and at the start of the year, so there’s not as much upward pressure on home prices during that time. That’s why, even the green bars toward the end of the year show smaller price gains. It’s perfectly normal in the housing market for home price growth to slow down in the winter. That’s because fewer people move during the holidays and at the start of the year, so there’s not as much upward pressure on home prices during that time. That’s why, even the green bars toward the end of the year show smaller price gains. The overarching story is that prices went up last year, not down. To sum all that up, the source for that data in the graph above, Case Shiller, explains it like this: “Month-over-month numbers were relatively flat, . . . However, the annual growth was more significant for both indices, rising 7.4 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively.” If one of the expert organizations tracking home price trends says the very slight dips are nothing to worry about, why be concerned? Even Case-Shiller is drawing your attention to how those were virtually flat and how home prices actually grew over the year. For expert guidance and support throughout your journey, reach out to Benson Group  when you're ready to take the next step towards finding your dream home. ---------- Source: keepingcurrentmatters.com

According to homesandgardens.com, this April's paint color trends explore everything from off-white and pastel yellow to sky blue and deep purple. April brings new beginnings, abundance, and warmer weather, making it the perfect time to choose paint colors. With nature as our inspiration, this month's palette includes seafoam green, deep purple, and pure white. From zesty yellows to punchy purples, April invites us to refresh our interiors. Discover the latest paint trends and expert tips for bringing these colors into your home this spring. WHITE White, a symbol of purity and sophistication, offers endless versatility in spring interiors. As Karen Haller, color psychology specialist, suggests, it brings peace and clarity, making rooms feel spacious and bright. While Brilliant White remains a classic choice, consider warmed-hued whites inspired by nature for a grounded feel. Charu Gandhi recommends an off-white palette with beige and ivory undertones for added warmth. DEEP PURPLE Like the abundance of deep purple flowers in spring gardens, purple interiors are experiencing a resurgence. Francesca Wezel highlights its inviting and friendly energy, perfect for creating a relaxed ambiance. Associated with sociability and open-mindedness, deep purple is favored in communal areas, evoking comfort and ease. GRASS GREEN Symbolizing nature and vitality, green remains a timeless favorite for interior decor. Francesca Wezel emphasizes its soothing and grounding effect, fostering emotional well-being. As nature springs to life, embrace the botanical shades of grass and spring green to refresh and restore your living spaces. PASTEL YELLOW Uplifting and mood-boosting, pastel yellow continues to shine in spring interiors. Justyna Korczynska praises its optimism and calming qualities, particularly when paired with cool tones like gray and muted blues. Despite being underutilized, yellow has the power to lift spaces and create interest, enhancing a sense of positivity at home. SKY BLUE With spring's arrival, light sky blues take center stage, promising a fresh start and a bright future. Marianne Shillingford highlights their airy and restorative nature, ideal for modern living spaces. Whether paired with neutrals for a classic calm or bold tones for a head-turning scheme, blue invites optimism and well-being indoors. BARBIE PINK Bubblegum pink shades, affectionately known as Barbie pink, are making a comeback for their versatility and mood-enhancing qualities. This vibrant hue, once popular in the '80s, is reclaiming its place in contemporary interiors. Natalia Miyar praises its elegance and suggests using it as an accent for a subtle pop of color or as a bold statement throughout a room. BURNT ORANGE Energizing and sophisticated, burnt orange adds a bold touch to spring interiors. Helen Sanderson celebrates its optimism and suggests pairing it with teal and blush for a fresh, modern look. Whether incorporated through soft furnishings or accent walls, burnt orange brings warmth and vibrancy to any space, embodying the spirit of the season. Spring invites a palette of colors that evoke renewal, vitality, and joy. From the purity of white to the boldness of deep purple and the vibrancy of burnt orange, each hue brings its unique energy to create refreshing and inspiring living spaces. Whether you seek relaxation, optimism, or sophistication, there's a spring color palette to suit every style and mood, promising a season of rejuvenation and renewal within your home. For expert guidance and support throughout your journey, reach out to Benson Group  when you're ready to take the next step towards finding your dream home. ---------- Source: homesandgardens.com

According to keepingcurrentmatters.com, thinking about selling your house? As you make your decision, consider what’s pushing you to think about moving. Let’s take a closer look and see if they’re motivating you to make a change too. 1. To Make a Profit If you’re thinking about selling your house, you probably have a lot of questions on your mind. Well, here’s some good news – the latest data shows most sellers get a great return on their investment when they sell. ATTOM, a property data provider, explains: “. . . home sellers made a $121,000 profit on the typical sale in 2023, generating a 56.5 percent return on investment.” That’s significant. And here’s one contributing factor. During the pandemic, home prices skyrocketed. There was way more buyer demand than homes available for sale and that combination pushed prices up. Now, home prices are still rising, just not as fast. That ongoing appreciation is good news for your bottom line. Any profit you make can help offset some of today’s affordability challenges when you buy your next home. If you're interested in discovering the current value of your home and staying updated on local market trends, consult Benson Group , your trusted real estate professionals in the area. 2. For Family Reasons Maybe you want to be near relatives to help take care of older family members or to have more support nearby. Or maybe you’re just eager to spend time together on special occasions like birthdays and holidays. Selling a house and moving closer to the people who matter the most to you helps keep you connected. If the distance is making you miss out on some big milestones in their lives, it might be time to talk to a local real estate agent to find a place close by. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) says: “A great real estate agent will guide you through the home search with an unbiased eye, helping you meet your buying objectives while staying within your budget.” For expert guidance and support throughout your journey, reach out to Benson Group  when you're ready to take the next step towards finding your dream home. ---------- Source: keepingcurrentmatters.com

According to cnbc.com, unlock the secrets to showcasing art in your home with finesse and flair! Whether you're a seasoned collector or just starting to adorn your walls, this article offers invaluable guidance on transforming your living space into a gallery of personal expression. From sizing and arrangement to color coordination and beyond, discover expert tips and real-life insights to elevate your home decor to new heights. There are two common mistakes people make when hanging art in their homes, according to art consultant Louisa Warfield. “The first is, they hang work that is too small for the space. And often you’ll go in, and you’ll find a sofa [couch] with one tiny picture above it, and that looks lonely and bleak,” she said. Instead, “Hang a wall… with as big a painting as you can fit.” This helps a room feel homey, Warfield said, while at the same time making the space appear larger. Don’t be afraid to hang large artworks in smaller spaces such as hallways, Warfield said. The second mistake is hanging artworks too high, which makes pieces harder to “connect” with. “Whether it’s just the visual connection, you just like the look of it, or whether it’s an emotional connection, you feel something from it … if the work is hung too high it feels like it’s not really in the room,” she said. A guideline is to hang the work so that its center is about 150cm above the floor, Warfield said. Alternatively, hang it so that your eye level is about a third of the way down from the top of the piece. “These are guides — there’s no hard and fast rule,” she said. The ‘gallery wall’ Having a gallery wall, where several pieces of varying sizes are hung together, is a popular way to display art at home. Most people are not art collectors who buy work around a particular theme; instead, they might acquire pieces on vacation or receive art as gifts, Warfield said. “As our lives grow and get bigger, [the artworks] often don’t match. But a gallery wall … allows you to draw together lots of quite disparate bits into one quite holistic look,” she said. Warfield suggests giving the display cohesion. “This might be as simple as everything has a black frame. This might be simple as everything is a flower picture, or … everything is a black and white photo,” she said. She might add a quirk, such as having one picture that has a touch of red in it that stands out against a monochrome selection.  In a large home, a gallery wall might be about 160cm in height and about the width of the couch the art will hang above, Warfield said. She said mixing larger pieces with smaller ones is acceptable and recommended laying out pictures on the floor in front of the couch to decide how to display them. Should you have the largest picture in the middle of the display? “There’s no ‘should,’” she said. “There are a million different ways of doing it.” Warfield charges £175 ($222) plus taxes for two hours of advice on what to buy and how to display it. When it comes to the hang itself, it’s worth hiring a professional who understands the best fittings to use for the size of the artwork and the type of wall it will go on, Warfield said. Expect to pay a professional hanger around £80 an hour, she said. To match or not You might want artwork to fit with a color scheme you have chosen for your home, but this is something that the art world — which can be elitist — might look down on, Warfield said. Her approach is more inclusive: “You must do whatever you want in your home — it’s your sanctuary,” Warfield said. “What I advise my clients is that you might want it to match now, but your sofa and your [color] palette is almost certainly going to change again in seven to 10 years,” Warfield said. If you are buying art and are keen on a matching approach, “be very aware of how much money are you spending, and will that picture have longevity after you have changed the color of your sitting room?” If you’ve recently moved home and feel your existing artworks don’t fit your new space, consider reframing pieces or hanging them unframed to give them a new look, Warfield suggested, or have them glazed in non-reflective and UV-protective glass that will display work more clearly. For Helen Sunderland Cohen, who collects modern and contemporary art and photography, balance is important. “I try to place works that feel good in a particular space, and that interact organically with one another. This could be through colour, style, or a motif. For example, I decided to hang black and white photography down one corridor,” she told CNBC by email. An art collector’s approach Sunderland-Cohen’s London home features an open-plan living area with large windows along its length that shed light on her collection. A mask by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare hangs next to a monoprint on fabric by British artist Aimee Parrott, followed by an oil on canvas by post-war British artist Prunella Clough. Meanwhile, a bright pink porcelain cone by Simon Bejer is displayed on a side table — Bejer is a graduate of the City & Guilds School of Art in London, where Sunderland Cohen is a trustee. “I ... try to arrange the art in a way that works with the furniture, rugs, and light, so that everything feels harmonious,” Sunderland Cohen said. Sunderland Cohen, who manages The Sunderland Collection, a collection of antique world maps and atlases, said she buys work for her home that she has a personal connection to, such as places she has lived. “I think a lot of displaying art comes down to confidence and intuition, rather than worrying about what other people will think or how trendy an artist is,” she said. “I am fascinated by design, and like living with it: even simple objects like a well-designed lamp or a beautiful cushion, or a quirky vase. These items do not have to be expensive, just engaging and fun,” she said. For expert guidance and support throughout your journey, reach out to Benson Group  when you're ready to take the next step towards finding your dream home. ---------- Source: cnbc.com

For expert guidance and support throughout your journey, reach out to Benson Group  when you're ready to take the next step towards finding your dream home.

According to realestate.usnews.com, the value of your home can vary widely based on the purpose of the appraisal. Understanding your home’s value is an important part of knowing your net worth, what you’ll likely receive if you sell the property and how the local real estate market is faring. Home value is also an integral part of determining how much property tax you’re required to pay the local and state government annually. But depending on where you look, your home's value may appear as wildly different numbers. Different valuations can mean different things and are often used for different reasons. The two types you’ll most likely encounter are market value and assessed value. Here's a quick explainer on market value vs. assessed value: Market value is the estimated amount active buyers would currently be willing to pay for your home. Your home’s market value is determined by a real estate appraiser, who is typically hired when your lender is deciding how much money to provide in a loan or you are setting the list price when putting your home on the market. Assessed value takes the market value and puts it in the context of your property taxes. In many counties throughout the U.S., assessed value is a portion of the market value, calculated as a percentage of the market value of the property. As a result, the assessed value of a property is typically lower than appraised market value. Keep reading for a more in-depth look at market value and assessed value and what they mean for your home's price point and property taxes. Market Value Danielle Hale, chief economist for a real estate information company, explains that market value is based on the expectation that the property would sell during the period the value is calculated. “When people think about home values, they often mean, ‘This is the price that I could sell it for if I were to sell it today,’ or ‘This is the way a bank would value it if I were to go talk to the bank about getting a home equity loan or maybe refinancing my mortgage,’” she says. The gray area of market value is determining whether the value you assign to your home is based on what current market conditions say a person would pay for your house or what you think a person should pay for it. For this reason, basing market value on recent sales of similar properties is key to ensuring the number is as accurate as possible. Professional appraisers are an instrumental part of the process because they examine a property, nearby recent sales and the factors that may add to or detract from interest in a property, and then assign a value to the house based on the information. A Home Appraisal Helps Determine the Home's Market Value Appraisers are often hired by a mortgage lender, and it's best if they are local to the area so they understand nuances that may not be obvious to an out-of-towner, though sometimes an algorithm will be used to determine values quickly or on a larger scale. A lender can have a property valuated to issue a mortgage for a home purchase, for refinancing or to issue a home equity loan. Individual homeowners can also order their own appraisal to get a better understanding of their home’s current value, if they’re considering selling but don’t know what the asking price should be, or simply to get a better grasp on their net worth. Home Appraisals vs. Home Value Estimators An appraisal looks at the sale information of nearby homes with a similar square footage, age, number of bedrooms and other features of your property that have sold recently – most often in the last six months. Appraisers will also factor in major differences that may make your home’s valuation different. Because the market determines the value, it's easier to pinpoint a more accurate value for homes that are similar to others in the neighborhood than for houses that are unique. A three-bedroom house in a neighborhood of matching three-bedroom houses is relatively easy to appraise, but a Victorian home on a busy street surrounded by condos and apartment buildings will be more difficult to valuate. Hale says online tools serve as a great jumping-off point, but they fail to take into account current and local events that may play a more immediate factor into buyer interest and the ultimate value. “Market conditions can affect that valuation,” Hale says. Assessed Value Market value even becomes part of the calculation of your home’s assessed value. But because assessed value is used for the sake of calculating how much you owe in property taxes, the assessed value is also based on the laws of your state, county and even city, explains Margie Cusack, research manager for the International Association of Assessing Officers. “The assessed value will be defined by the legal framework of that jurisdiction,” she says. “A lot of states have value limitations in law, so they might have a market value for the property. But then they have a per law allowable assessed value that they work off of, so it becomes very localized.” Because of the specificity of assessed value to your exact location, Cusack recommends all homeowners – as well as homebuyers who don’t yet pay property taxes – become well-versed in the statutes that apply to the area, how the assessment is calculated and where your property taxes go. “You really need to read your assessment notice,” she says. “Usually that will define what assessed value means for that property.” The exact steps to assessing a property also vary by jurisdiction. Some assessor’s offices will use a predictive algorithm to help determine assessed values for more properties quickly, while others will address assessments on an individual, in-person basis, Cusack says. Many assessors’ offices keep online databases open to the public that allow you to access information on the history of your property – including the deed from previous sales – and information that factors into the assessment of your property. What if You Disagree With Your Home’s Appraised or Assessed Value? At times, homeowners will disagree with the appraised or assessed value assigned to their property. In both scenarios, there are options for contesting the valuation. For market value, a homeowner or buyer may be able to request a property be appraised a second time with new information the appraiser may not have been aware of before – a finished basement, for instance, can change the value of a home if it can be counted in the square footage. An appraiser may be willing to take a second look at the property without extra charge if something was missed, but you may also need to pay for another complete appraisal to have your house fully reevaluated. When it’s a lender issuing the appraisal and considering the value, however, there’s not much chance you’ll be able to convince the lender to change his or her mind on issuing a loan or refinance. For assessed value, many assessor’s offices have contact information listed and occasionally host public forums to discuss individual issues with property value information. Like the calculation of assessed value itself, the process for petitioning a reassessment varies widely between states and counties, so it’s best to explore your local assessor’s office website for information on discussing the matter. Curious about your home's true value? Whether you're considering selling or just want to understand your property taxes better, knowing the difference between market and assessed value is key. Contact Benson Group today for a professional appraisal and personalized insights into your home's worth. ---------- Source: realestate.usnews.com