It's time.... You've contacted an agent to do a price analysis of your home, and they bring you a nice little "fluffy" CMA that has a few homes that are on the market, a few that are under deposit, and a few more more that sold, all spiral bound, in full color, with the marketing plan built right into it.
All great, but is it enough information to price your home correctly? Probably not. First of all, those pre-packaged market analyses are completed at the touch of a few buttons on a computer program without a lot of thought process going into it. Furthermore, some of thesse programs only allow three to six comparables per listing status. (active, pending, and sold)
Even if the agent hand picks the comparables for you, the program itself has its limitations. The whole presentation might look lovely, but the accuracy of pricing may be a whole other ball game- and then there's the standard marketing plan that will sell every house in town which is nicely included in your presentation with pretty graphics. Even a novice knows that the marketing plan that is used to sell the house next door cannot be correct for your home, too.
A market analysis that shows just five or so listings in different status categories does not indicate a price for your home. Rather, it indicates some kind of average for the listings chosen. I do not consider those a real pricing analysis, sorry.
Real CMA's are kind of boring, face it- unless it's my animated self going over all of the information for you! If you happen to have an agent come over who gives you one of these fluffy CMA's, use it as a placemat. It's not worth anything else.
A market analysis should be so detailed that even YOU don't have to guess as to what the price of your home should be. It will be inherently obvious- no guessing required. If you want to know the true price of your home in today's market, contact me. No fluff unless you want it, no hard sales tactics, just correct information. :)