Understanding Your Home's Actual Market Value
“What’s my house worth?” has at least four different answers, depending on which one you’re actually asking.
The Short Version
There isn’t one single “value” for your house — there are several, and they’re used for different things. Market value is what a buyer would actually pay right now. Appraised value is a lender-required professional opinion. Assessed value is what your county uses to calculate property taxes, and it often lags well behind reality. Online estimators give you a free starting point, but they’re working from public data alone — they’ve never seen your finished basement or your deferred maintenance.
The four numbers, and what each one is actually for
- Market value – What a real buyer would pay for your house today, in the current market. This is the most fluid of the four — it moves with mortgage rates, buyer demand, and how many similar homes are competing with yours at the moment.
- Appraised value – A licensed appraiser’s formal, in-person assessment — typically $300 to $600, and required by lenders before they’ll approve a mortgage. This carries legal weight the others don’t; it’s the number a bank actually relies on.
- Assessed value – Set by your county tax assessor, used exclusively to calculate property taxes. It’s reassessed on a fixed cycle (often every couple of years, not continuously), so it can drift meaningfully behind actual market value — sometimes enough that homeowners successfully appeal their tax assessment when it’s out of step with reality.
- Online estimates (Zillow, Redfin, and similar tools) – Free and instant, but built entirely from public records and recent sales data — no one’s actually walked through your house. They’re a reasonable starting ballpark, particularly for homes that have sold recently nearby, but they can be off by tens of thousands of dollars on homes with unique features, recent upgrades, or few comparable sales nearby to draw from.
What actually moves the number
Location is the single biggest driver — two nearly identical houses can differ by six figures based on school district or proximity to amenities alone. Condition and upgrades matter too, but not always as much as sellers expect: a renovated kitchen or a new roof might shift value by roughly 5-10%, and critically, none of that shows up in an online estimate until after the home actually sells and the sale becomes public record.
Why a cash offer number looks different from all four
If you’ve gotten a cash offer and it doesn’t match any of the numbers above, that’s not necessarily a lowball — it’s usually a different calculation entirely. Investors typically work backward from what the house would be worth after repairs, then subtract renovation costs and their own margin. That’s a legitimately different number than market value, not a dishonest one — though it’s worth understanding the difference before comparing offers. (See also: Cash Offer vs. Listing for how that comparison actually works.)
Trying to figure out what your house is actually worth?
We’ll walk through real comparable sales for your specific property — not just an algorithm’s guess.