If you are thinking about selling a home in Washington Township, Sewell, or anywhere in Gloucester County, the comparative market analysis, or CMA, is the most important document you will look at before you list. It turns your address into a defensible price range instead of a mysterious online figure.
A CMA is a report a real estate agent builds to estimate what your home should sell for in today's market. It compares your home against similar properties that recently sold nearby, adjusted for the ways your home differs. It is not an appraisal, and it is not a guess. The best predictor of what a buyer will pay is what buyers just paid for homes like yours, on streets like yours, in the last few months.
The quality of a CMA lives and dies on the comps. I pull sales from the last three to six months, within about half a mile, in the same school zone, then match square footage, bedrooms and baths, garage, lot size, age, and style. In Washington Township, two nearly identical homes can differ by tens of thousands of dollars because one feeds Washington Township High School and the other does not.
No two homes are identical, so comps get adjusted. If a comparable sold for $410,000 with a renovated kitchen yours lacks, I subtract for it. If your home has a newer roof or a finished basement the comp did not, I add. Price per square foot is a sanity check: most resale homes in Sewell and Washington Township trade between $190 and $250 per finished square foot, with Mullica Hill and Harrison Township higher. Automated tools cannot do this, because they have never seen inside your home.
A good CMA reads how long the comps sat before going under contract. Well-priced Gloucester County homes are going under contract in 15 to 30 days. If similar homes sold in a week, there is room to push. If they lingered past 45 days, the market is capping the price. Overprice your home and it becomes the stale listing that helps the house down the street sell. Underprice it and you hand a buyer equity that was yours.
A comparative market analysis is free and comes with no obligation. Start with a free home valuation, weigh a fast sale against a full listing, or contact John Rinick at (267) 205-1824.