How much is my house worth?

There are four different things people mean when they ask what their house is worth, and they produce four different numbers. Sorting out which one you actually need takes about two minutes and saves a lot of confusion later. I spent 15 years as a licensed agent and called more than 2,000 auctions before starting Unreserved, and the single most common reason a campaign goes sideways is that the seller was working from the wrong kind of number without knowing it.

Four questions, four different numbers

Before you get a single figure, work out which question you are asking. The four methods below are not competing versions of the same answer. They are built for different jobs, and using the wrong one is how sellers end up either disappointed or overcharged.

Most sellers need the second one. Most sellers are offered the first one and then talked into a listing appointment. The rest of this guide is about how to get to the second one without paying for it in commission.

The free agent appraisal: what it is actually for

Every agent in Australia will value your home for free. It takes them 40 minutes and it costs them nothing.

It is not a valuation. It is a sales call.

That does not make it worthless. An experienced local agent genuinely knows what has been selling and what buyers are chasing in your streets, and that knowledge is real. But you need to read the number knowing what it is optimised for, which is winning your listing. Two patterns show up constantly.

Buying the listing

Three agents appraise your home. Two say $980,000 to $1,050,000. One says $1,150,000. You list with the third. Six weeks later you are having the “the market is telling us something” conversation and the price is being walked back to where the first two had it. The agent has your signature and a 90-day authority. You have a stale listing, a campaign that has already spent its best fortnight, and a price history that every buyer can see.

The uncomfortable part is that this is rational behaviour for the agent. Winning the listing is the hard part of their job. Repricing it later is a conversation, and by then you are committed.

Conditioning down

The reverse happens just as often. A low appraisal makes the property easy to sell fast, which is a much better hourly rate for the agent even though it costs you far more than their entire fee.

Run the maths on a $1 million home. A 3 per cent difference in sale price is $30,000 to you. To an agent on a 2.5 per cent commission, that same 3 per cent is worth about $750 before tax and before the split with their agency. Their incentive to fight through two more weeks of campaign for the last slice of price is roughly the cost of a weekend. Yours is $30,000. That gap is not a character flaw in agents. It is arithmetic built into the percentage model.

So if you get free appraisals, get three, and ask each one for the comparable sales they used. Ask which sales, on which streets, on what dates, and what they adjusted for. An agent who will not show you the comps is giving you a number, not an opinion. The ones who hand over a two-page evidence pack without blinking are the ones worth listening to, whether or not you end up using an agent at all.

For the full picture of what that percentage actually costs across a campaign, see our guide to real estate agent commission in Australia.

Online estimates and AVMs

An AVM, or automated valuation model, is what sits behind every “instant” home value tool you have clicked on. It reads recent sales in your area, your property’s attributes from council and title records, and local price movement, then produces an estimate and a confidence rating.

They are genuinely useful and genuinely limited, and the difference between those two states is predictable.

Where AVMs are good

Established suburbs, homogeneous housing stock, high sales volume. A three-bedroom brick veneer in a suburb where twenty similar homes sold last year will be estimated well, because the model has exactly the evidence it needs and none of the ambiguity. In that situation an AVM will often land closer than a rushed appraisal, because it has no reason to flatter you.

Where AVMs fall apart

• Renovations they cannot see. The model has your 1970s floor plan and your last sale price. It does not know about the $180,000 kitchen and bathroom, the second bathroom you added, or the studio out the back.
• Anything unusual. Acreage, subdividable land, heritage overlays, water frontage, homes with a view, anything architect-designed. The model has nothing to compare against, so it reaches for the nearest ordinary house and gets it wrong in both directions.
• Thin markets. Regional towns and prestige suburbs where four properties sold all year. There is no statistical population to draw from.
• Turning markets. AVMs read backwards. In a market that moved in the last quarter, the model is describing the market you had, not the one you are selling into.

Watch the confidence rating more than the number. A wide range with low confidence is the model telling you it does not know, and that is honest information rather than a fault. Treat a low-confidence estimate as a starting point for research, not an answer.

Going deeper on AVMs: this section is the overview. If you want the mechanics, how a model pulls comparables within 2km, weights each one, drops the outliers, and how close the resulting band actually lands to a final sale price, that is covered end to end in instant house valuations: how online estimates actually work.

A note on free calculators

Most free online valuation calculators exist to capture your details and sell them. The estimate is the bait. Within a day or two you will hear from agents who paid for your address and phone number, and you will keep hearing from them for months.

Read what happens to your data before you hand over your address and phone number. If the tool requires a phone number before it will show you a figure, the number is not the product. You are.

Formal valuations, and when you actually need one

A certified valuation is done by a member of the Australian Property Institute who physically inspects the property and produces a written report. It costs $300 to $800 for a standard residential property and takes a few days. A sworn valuation, prepared so it can be defended in a legal setting, runs higher.

You need one for:

• Mortgage refinancing or a new loan, although the bank usually orders its own
• Family law settlements
• Deceased estates and probate
• Capital gains tax calculations on an investment property
• Disputes where a number has to hold up under challenge

You do not need one to sell. And you should not read a bank valuation as a verdict on your asking price. Bank valuations are deliberately conservative, because the lender is pricing its downside if it has to sell your house in a hurry, not estimating what a motivated buyer will pay on a good Saturday with two other parties in the room. A valuation frequently comes in below a realistic sale price, and that is the system working exactly as designed.

What actually sets your price: comparable sales

Every method above is a proxy for one thing. What did buyers recently pay for homes like yours?

Doing this yourself is more achievable than agents let on. It is the same method a valuer uses and the same method a good agent uses, and the only real barrier is that nobody has written it down for you in order. Here it is.

That is the whole method. It is what a good agent does, it is what an AVM approximates, and it takes an afternoon.

Where this guide stops: the six steps above tell you what your home is worth. They do not tell you what to advertise, and those are different decisions. Turning an evidence-backed value into an asking price means choosing a range width, deciding where to sit against the listings your buyers are cross-shopping, and holding your nerve when the first offer lands under it. That is a separate framework, and it is written up in full in how to price your home without an agent.

The one thing that costs sellers the most

Overpricing.

The theory is that you start high and come down. In practice, a listing gets its enquiry in the first two weeks and never gets that attention back. Buyers searching your suburb see the new listing, price it against everything else they have been looking at, and either enquire or move on. If they move on, they have already formed a view about your house. The price reduction three weeks later does not bring them back. It just tells the buyers still watching to wait for the next one.

Homes that sell above expectation are almost always homes that were priced to attract competition, not priced to leave room. The best result comes from multiple buyers who each think they might miss out, and you cannot manufacture that from a price nobody wants to enquire on. Competition is the mechanism. Price is only the lever that switches it on.

There is a diagnostic here that is worth writing on the fridge. If your listing has high views and low enquiry after week one, that is not a marketing problem. That is price. Views mean the photos and the headline are doing their job and buyers are clicking. Silence after the click means they have looked at the number and decided it is not for them. We wrote up what that looks like week by week in high views, low enquiries.

So what should I actually do?

It depends entirely on how far out you are. Doing the right thing at the wrong time is how sellers end up on agent call lists for a year before they were ever ready to list.

What holds up in a negotiation is not a number. It is a number with evidence sitting behind it. A buyer who challenges your price and gets three recent sales in reply usually stops challenging. A buyer who challenges your price and gets a feeling in reply keeps pushing, and they are right to.

Our free valuation takes about 60 seconds, uses comparable sales data rather than a generic index, and does not require a phone number or put you on an agent’s call list. It gives you a price band and the comps behind it, which is the part you can actually use. When you are ready to go further, you can see the whole flat-fee approach in how it works.

Frequently asked questions

How can I find out how much my house is worth for free?

Three free options answer slightly different questions. An online estimate or AVM gives you a number in about a minute, accurate to roughly 10 to 20 per cent. Reviewing recent comparable sales yourself gets you to a defensible range for the cost of an afternoon. A free agent appraisal costs nothing but is a sales call, so read it knowing what it is optimised for. Most sellers get the best result from all three, then look for where they converge.

How accurate are online house value estimates?

Typically within 10 to 20 per cent, and tighter than that in established suburbs with high sales volume and similar housing stock. They lose accuracy on anything the data cannot see: unrecorded renovations, acreage, heritage overlays, water frontage and architect-designed homes, plus thin regional and prestige markets. Watch the confidence rating rather than the headline figure.

How much does a property valuation cost in Australia?

A certified residential valuation costs roughly $300 to $800 and takes a few days. A sworn valuation for court, tax or a deceased estate usually costs $500 to $1,500, because the valuer has to be able to defend the figure. Online estimates and agent appraisals are free.

Do I need a formal valuation to sell my house?

No. Formal valuations are for lending, family law, probate, capital gains tax and disputes. To sell, you need a defensible price band backed by comparable sales you can name.

What is the difference between an appraisal and a valuation?

An appraisal is an agent’s opinion of what your home would sell for. It is free, takes about 40 minutes, carries no legal weight and comes from someone who wants your listing. A valuation is a written report from a certified practising valuer who inspects the property, documents the evidence and stands behind the number. It costs money and it holds up in front of a bank or a court.

How many comparable sales do I need to price my home?

Five to eight. Fewer than five and a single unusual sale distorts the picture. More than ten usually means the filters have been widened past genuinely comparable homes.

Why did three agents give me three different prices?

Because an appraisal is a pitch, not a measurement. A high number wins the listing and gets walked back once the campaign stalls. A low number makes the property easy to sell quickly, which suits the agent’s hourly rate more than your net proceeds. Ask every agent for the comparable sales behind their figure.

Does a bank valuation tell me what my house will sell for?

No, and it is not meant to. A bank valuation estimates what the property would realise in a controlled sale if the lender had to recover its money. It ignores the premium a motivated buyer pays in competition. Coming in below your expected sale price is normal.

How often does my home’s value change?

Enough that a number more than three months old should be treated as stale. Median values in most Australian markets move measurably quarter to quarter, and individual suburbs can move faster than the capital city figure.

Can I get a house valuation without giving my phone number?

Yes. Many calculators gate the number behind a phone field because your contact details are what they are selling. Unreserved’s free valuation returns a price band and the comparables behind it without a phone number and without putting you on a call list.

The bottom line

Work out which question you are asking before you collect a single number. If you are years out, an online estimate checked quarterly is enough. If you are months out, do the comparable sales work yourself and use appraisals as evidence to interrogate rather than answers to accept. If you are selling now, what you need is a price band with five to eight named sales behind it, priced to attract competition rather than to leave room.

Every method in this guide is trying to approximate the same thing: what buyers just paid for homes like yours. Once you can answer that with evidence, the number stops being something an agent hands you and starts being something you own.