Estimate your home's value (free)

Search your address on Zillow. The Zestimate is shown right under the street view. It's an algorithm that pulls from public sales records, MLS data (where Zillow has it), and tax assessor data. Useful as a starting anchor.

Limits: Zillow has never seen the inside of your home, doesn't know about your renovations, and lags 30-90 days on rapidly-changing markets. Zillow's own published median error is ~2% for on-market homes and ~7% for off-market homes — meaning it's often $20,000-30,000 off on a $400,000 home.

Search your address on Redfin. The Redfin Estimate uses a different algorithm and a slightly different data set than Zillow — Redfin tends to weight recent comparable sales more heavily, while Zillow leans on tax assessor data. They often disagree by 3-5%, which is useful: the gap tells you the range of plausible values.

Limits: same as Zillow — algorithm, no on-site visit, lags real-time market changes.

Every county in the US has a public appraisal district website — in Texas, you can find yours by Googling "[County name] CAD" (e.g., "Harris CAD" or "Bexar CAD"). Look up your address. The county-appraised value is what your property tax is based on.

This number tends to LAG market value by 6-18 months and is often 10-25% lower than current market value (counties are conservative on purpose, to avoid lawsuits over over-assessment). Useful as a floor — the county number is rarely higher than what you can actually sell for.

Pull all three numbers. If two are within 5% of each other and the third is far off, drop the outlier and average the two close ones. If all three are scattered, lean on the two recent sold comps in your immediate neighborhood instead — see our pricing article.

Rough example: Zillow says $410,000, Redfin says $402,000, county appraisal says $355,000. The county is the outlier (lagging). Average Zillow + Redfin = $406,000. That's your starting price range. Cross-check against 2-3 sold comps within 0.5 miles in the last 90 days, and you have your asking price.