WHAT A COMPARABLE MARKET ANALYSIS SHOULD LOOK LIKE

To help you arrive at a realistic offer number, it is super important that your agent do a Comparable Market Analysis (CMA).  Automated CMAs are pretty useless (you can tell when you get one - they are 40 pages long and don't have a spreadsheet) and have no more validity than an online estimate.  Ask your agent to do a full CMA (manually, no automation) so that you can really tell how much the home will likely actually sell for.  Although the bulk of the CMA may widely differ depending on who does it, the spreadsheet will look pretty much like what we have below here.  It shows the range the property will likely sell for and provides the numbers as to how your agent arrived at those numbers (remember asking the math teacher if you had to show your work?).