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What is your home worth?
Send us your address and a licensed loan officer will put together a written estimate of what your home is worth, drawn from public records and recent sales nearby. No cost, no obligation, and it is not a credit application.
This is an automated estimate produced from public records and third party data. It is not an appraisal, it is not an offer of credit, and it does not establish the value of your property. Only a licensed appraiser can do that. CME Lending Group LLC, NMLS #1248883.
How it works
How an automated home value estimate is calculated.
An automated valuation model, usually shortened to AVM, is a statistical model that estimates what a property would sell for today. It reads the county record for your house, finds properties nearby that recently sold, adjusts for the ways your house differs from them, and returns a number with a range around it.
Three inputs do most of the work. The first is your property record: square footage, lot size, bedroom and bathroom count, year built, and the last recorded sale. The second is comparable sales, meaning homes near you that actually closed in the last several months. The third is the direction of your local market between those sales and today.
The model never sees inside your house. It does not know you finished the basement, replaced the roof, or that the kitchen is original to 1974. That is the whole reason the estimate comes with a range instead of a single number, and the whole reason it is not an appraisal.
An estimate is not an appraisal.
These two words get used as if they mean the same thing. They do not, and the difference matters the moment you apply for a loan.
An estimate
Produced by software from public data in seconds. Free. Useful for deciding whether a conversation is worth having. Carries no legal weight and no lender relies on it.
An appraisal
Produced by a state licensed appraiser who inspects the property and writes a signed report. Ordered through an independent appraisal management company, not by your loan officer. This is the number a loan is written against.
An appraisal waiver
On some loans the automated underwriting system accepts a property value without sending an appraiser out. It is not guaranteed and it is not something you request. Your loan officer will tell you if your file gets one.
What comes next
What you can do with the equity you have.
Equity is the difference between what your home is worth and what you still owe on it. Most homeowners who look up their value are really asking a second question underneath the first: what can I do with that. There are four honest answers.
Refinance
Replace your existing mortgage with a new one. Whether that helps depends on where your current loan sits, and a loan officer can tell you in one conversation.
Cash-out refinance
Refinance for more than you owe and take the difference in cash. One loan, one payment, and the new terms apply to the whole balance.
Home equity line of credit
A second lien that leaves your first mortgage exactly where it is. Draw what you need when you need it. Often the right answer when the first mortgage is one you want to keep.
Nothing at all
Sometimes the right move is to leave it alone. A loan officer who tells you that is worth more than one who does not, and we would rather be the first kind.
Why your estimate might be off.
Automated estimates are closest to right on ordinary houses in neighborhoods where a lot of similar houses sell. They drift furthest in five situations, and it is worth knowing whether you are in one of them before you take the number to heart.
- You renovated and nobody recorded it. A finished basement, an addition, or a gut kitchen shows up in a sale price and never in a county record. The model cannot see any of it.
- Your house is unusual for the block. The only four bedroom on a street of two bedrooms, an acreage parcel, a log home, a converted church. Nothing nearby is comparable, so nothing nearby helps.
- Almost nothing has sold near you. Rural areas and very small towns can go months without a comparable closing. Thin data means a wide range.
- The county record is wrong. Square footage and bedroom counts in assessor files carry real errors, and the model inherits every one of them.
- Condition is doing the talking. Two identical floor plans can be sixty thousand dollars apart on condition alone, and condition is exactly what a model cannot observe.
If you are in one of those five, the estimate is a starting point and not much more. A loan officer can pull the actual comparable sales for your street and walk you through them.
Questions people actually ask.
How accurate is an online home value estimate?
On a typical house in an active neighborhood, a good automated model usually lands within a few percent of what the property later sells for. On unusual properties, in thin markets, or after unrecorded renovations, it can be off by a great deal more. That is why the estimate is shown as a range rather than a single figure, and why no lender writes a loan against one.
Does checking my home value affect my credit?
No. Looking up a property value touches property records, not credit records. Nothing on this page pulls your credit, and nothing here is an application.
Is this the same as a Zestimate or a Redfin estimate?
It is the same kind of thing, which is an automated valuation model, but it is a different model reading a different blend of data, so the numbers will not match exactly. It is normal and expected for two automated estimates of the same house to differ. Neither one is the appraised value.
Will my lender use this number?
No. A mortgage is underwritten against an appraisal by a state licensed appraiser, or in some cases against a value the automated underwriting system accepts. An estimate on a website is not part of that file.
How much equity do I have in my home?
Take the value of your home and subtract every loan secured by it, including a second mortgage or a home equity line if you have one. Your current balance is on your most recent mortgage statement, not the amount you originally borrowed. What is left over is your equity.
How often should I check?
Once or twice a year is plenty for most people. Check sooner if a lot has sold near you, if you have finished a significant project, or if you are starting to think about a move.
What do you do with my address?
We use it to look up the property and, if you ask us to, to have a licensed loan officer follow up with you. We do not sell it. Our Privacy Policy and Financial Privacy Notice set out exactly what we collect and what we do with it.
Where we lend.
We can pull a value on any address in the United States. If you want to do something with the equity, we have to be licensed where the property is. These are the twenty-two states where we are.
AlabamaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKentuckyMichiganMississippiMissouriNew JerseyNorth CarolinaOhioPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasWisconsin
Find out what you qualify for.
A licensed loan officer reviews what you send and tells you where you stand, in writing. No cost, and no obligation to go further.