“What is my home worth?” gets three different answers depending on who you ask — the county, an appraiser, and the market. Confusing them costs sellers money and costs buyers deals. The video below covers the concept; this article untangles the three numbers and shows how market value actually gets determined.
The Three “Values” of Every Property
- Assessed value is the county’s number for taxation. In Florida it is often well below what a home would sell for — especially on homesteaded properties where Save Our Homes caps annual increases. It tells you almost nothing about sale price.
- Appraised value is a licensed appraiser’s opinion, usually ordered by a lender to protect its loan. It is rigorous but backward-looking — built from closed sales that are months old.
- Market value is the only number that spends: what a willing, informed buyer will actually pay a willing, informed seller today.
How Market Value Is Actually Determined
Comparable sales — “comps” — do the heavy lifting: recent closed sales of similar homes, close by, adjusted for differences. The craft is in the adjustments, and this is where automated estimates fall apart. A Zestimate cannot see that one house backs a highway and the other backs a preserve, that a “4th bedroom” has no closet, or that the kitchen was renovated with taste versus renovated cheap. Three filters matter most:
- Recency: sales from the last 90 days beat sales from last year, especially when rates are moving.
- Proximity and likeness: same neighborhood, similar size, age, and condition — a pool home comps against pool homes.
- Terms: a sale with $15K in seller concessions is not really the price on the sticker.
What Moves Market Value
Beyond the comps: supply and demand in your price band, mortgage rates (they set what buyers can afford monthly, which is how buyers actually shop), condition and presentation, and in Florida — increasingly — insurability. A roof at the end of its life is not a cosmetic issue here; it is a financing and insurance issue that buyers price in hard.
Why Overpricing Backfires
The market answers quickly. An overpriced listing goes quiet, sits, and then chases the market down with price cuts — usually netting less than pricing right on day one would have. Days-on-market is a signal buyers read as “something is wrong,” and they discount accordingly.
Get the Real Number
If you own property in the Florida Panhandle and want an honest, comp-driven answer — not an algorithm’s guess and not a flattering number designed to win a listing — reach me at WinWithGlen.com and I will run the actual comps for you.