Why online estimates missAutomated home value tools work from public records and neighborhood averages. They cannot see your roof age, your renovation, your lot's orientation, whether your street backs a road, or the condition of the house that sold three doors down. In a neighborhood with a wide build-year span they can be off by a very large margin. A broker valuation uses the actual closed comparable sales, matched on build year, section, lot and condition, and it accounts for what the market is doing right now.
How we build the number
- Closed comparable sales from the MLS, matched on neighborhood, square footage, build year, lot size and condition. Not the Zestimate, not tax roll value.
- Weighted for recency, because a market that moved roughly 6.5 percent in a year makes a fourteen-month-old sale a historical note rather than a comp.
- Adjusted for what is actually in your house. A five-year-old roof, a recent HVAC, a renovated kitchen, a finished flex space. These are worth real money and an automated tool cannot see any of them.
- Set against your live competition. The homes listed against you right now are what a buyer is choosing between this weekend.
- Checked against expired and withdrawn listings, which show the prices this market has already rejected. This is the most underused data in real estate and it defines the ceiling.
It also works for a tax protest
If you are protesting your Williamson County appraisal, real closed comparable sales beat an automated estimate at a hearing every time. We will pull them for you whether or not you are a client and whether or not you ever list with us. Details on the process are in our Hutto property tax guide.
You do not have to be selling
Plenty of people want the number for refinancing, for an insurance review, for estate planning, for a divorce, or just to know. That is fine. We will give you the number and the comps behind it, and if you are not selling we will not call you about selling. Being useful to people in this town is how a family brokerage lasts fourteen years.
