Why do I need my home valued by a local expert?

With the internet playing a bigger role in everyday life and Rightmove, Zoopla and many other property portals all being able to give an indication of a property’s value why is it still important to have a local estate agent in Chelmsford come and value your property? Well our belief and experience is that an online valuation of anything, be that your property, a car, antiques etc. etc. can never be 100% accurate because it won’t be able to gather 100% of the information and consider all the factors needed to give an honest and accurate valuation of your property. The way online valuations work is by using an algorithm which calculates the number of properties of your type that have been sold or let within a certain mile’s radius of your postcode and then taking averages and combining them with percentage rises over a certain period of time and coming up with a figure. In some cases, this can be fairly accurate, in some cases it’s on the low side and in some cases its considerably higher giving the vendor or landlord false hope. If you live in an area such as a main road which generally have some very different roads branching off them then you will probably get a very skewed valuation. Let’s take Broomfield Road as an example. At the end closest to town we have the highly regarded Avenues on one side and on the other side roads such as Corporation Road and other roads connecting into Melbourne. Now there is nothing wrong with any of these roads but what you will find is that on either side and indeed along the main road its self you will find a whole variety of property types from different eras and different sizes and the houses in The Avenues are very different to the houses in Corporation road and others. But they are all within a quarter or half mile radius of each other and will share some of the same postcode prefixes. So a computer system will use this data in its algorithm and come up with a property valuation based on sold price data, house size, postcode area and various other things I am sure. But what it lacks is the local knowledge to know the area inside out and the slight differences in house types and areas from one side of a road to another. In Chelmsford we have this in many different areas. Baddow Road and Springfield Road are another example. In fact, take Park Avenue, off of Rainsford Road as an example. In this road we see many different types of property from different era’s in time. At one end of the road are Victorian and Edwardian houses and at the other end of the road 1950/1960’s council houses! Very different in value and I’d like to know how a computer will calculate that.

So what a local expert estate and letting agent in Chelmsford can do for you is to guide you around these anomalies and properly advise you on what adds or reduces value, what is worth improving before going to market and what you will not get a return on, what the local market is saying and where the buyers or tenants are coming from and what they are looking for. Data is valuable and will get you so far but an expert estate agent who lives and breathes the area they serve and is dealing with hundreds of buyers and tenants on a daily basis will give you an expert opinion and ultimately will advise you on how to achieve the best price, in the quickest timescale and with the least amount of hassle. I would argue that a computer will not be able to give you that level of service.

Whilst we’re on the Subject-What do I mean by a local property expert? Well what I don’t mean is an online agent who has been given the title of local property expert. What I mean is people who have many years of industry experience and local knowledge of the area they serve. True local knowledge is something that can only be built up over years of living in an area, attending the schools in the area, having your children attend those schools etc. At Charles David Casson estate agents in Chelmsford our directors have lived in Chelmsford for over 30 years and still do. Between them and their family they have attended all of the schools in Springfield, have family who have attended the schools in Great Baddow and even have friends and family who teach at these schools now!

So if you’d like to speak to a real local property expert about your property then please get in touch. We love talking property so we’d be delighted to have an informal conversation with you.