Whenever you want to sell a house you will want to keep in mind that your county assessor has valuable information that you can use. I have used the county assessor to find buyers for my houses time after time and often wonder why more people don’t take advantage of their free resources. Property ownership records are public information that you can access anytime. Check online first because many counties provide the information online now. You can go to your county assessor’s page online to locate the names and addresses of all the property owners in the neighborhood where your house is located, and then you can contact them about your house for sale.
I have been doing this for years myself, and it’s brought me great success. Neighborhood property ownership data provides excellent information when you want to sell your house, but you can also access tax evaluation data, too. Actually, your county assessor’s office provides data that’s invaluable to you in making informed decisions when you sell your house. You’ll find it’s very useful to find out what your neighbors paid for their houses, and the current county evaluation for tax purposes. Please note that assessed valuations do not necessarily reflect a current market value at all, but both are important when you set your selling price. You need comparable sales and valuation data before you price your house.
All the different counties across the country, and even within each state seem to use various different systems to store their information. I’m not sure why, but it seems like every county has its own unique system to organize and publish the public information it collect. As I said, most counties provide their data online now, but some still do not. Usually, it’s so easy to get the information from your home computer that there’s no reason any homeowner has to be in the dark about comparable properties in their neighborhood. You can literally your search county assessor’s database while you’re lounging around watching TV at home. The truth is, if you were curious you could get online and research any county in whole country, and some of my friends who are investors do that every week to find out what’s going on all over the country compared to their own geographical area. So, get online yourself to find out what you need to know to sell your house.
Whenever I start to research county assessors’ databases, first I locate my house and from there I find other property owners in my neighborhood. In some cities the metropolitan area is segmented into regions, which helps me search an entire region, not just my neighborhood. That may be important to you as well, if your house is somewhat unusual and you need comparable properties in order to sell your house. This is the same process used by professional appraisers and mortgage lenders, basically anyone requiring public data for their own purposes.
I take the information I’ve gathered and put it into a spreadsheet, and sometimes onto a map. Then I can actually see with a birds-eye view all the homes that have sold in the same geographical area whenever I am selling a house. This data is invaluable for mailing out postcards to neighbors, to give them information to share with friends and family. People love to be “in the know” about what’s happening in the neighborhood. The county assessor’s office is a genuine treasure trove of information you can use to establish a price and to find a buyer to sell your house. Don’t fail to use the county assessor to get what you need to price your house and sell your house in this tough real estate market today. We all need all the help we can get!