Sold for how much?

First Time Home Buyers, For Home buyers, For Home Sellers, Local Market Conditions & home prices, Neighborhoods

by Teresa Boardman, on 20 March 2007

This was originally posted on January 27, 2007. It is being reposted as a reminder that information about properties that have been sold is available. This information can be useful to home sellers and buyers.

How much a home sold for is public information and is available through tax records and is printed in the local paper each Wednesday. Now anyone with Internet access can search through all homes that have been sold in the past two years in Minnesota through broker reciprocity web sites. Let me explain that more clearly, click here to get started. Choose sold properties instead of active properties on the home search. No registration required.

The search works the same way for sold properties as it does for properties currently for sale, the data is gathered through a feed from our local RMLS system. Searches can be made using a map, or by area, or zip code or what ever search criteria the searcher wants to use.

The data is fairly accurate but the sale price does not reflect seller paid closing costs, for instance a home may show up as having sold for 200K, but the seller paid $5000.00 of the buyers closing costs. Under most loan programs the seller can not contribute more than 3% to the buyers closing costs so when looking at the sold prices allow for a 3% margin of error.

The sold data can be used to help determine the value of your home. A home owner can find homes in their immediate area that have been sold in the last year that have that are the same size, and have the same amenities and see how much it sold for giving them an idea of what their own home might be worth. Going back two years is not necessary and will make the value estimate less accurate. Realtors help sellers set the asking price in much the same way, and it is not an exact science.

Home buyers should use the same criteria that they are using to find homes for sale for searching through the solds, so that they can become familiar with the prices.

It can also be used to find out how much your neighbor really got for his or her house because inquiring minds really want to know.