Real Estate Regional USA
Start at Your County Courthouse for Local Market Trends
By Buyincomeproperty.com
Oct 26, 2005, 18:05

Successful real estate investors know their local market. The trends and values of the local market can make all the difference between choosing a good deal and a bad deal. But how do you know what your local market is like? Unless you’re heavy into real estate investing, or you have plenty of real estate savvy and a good handle on the local market, you probably have no idea how to figure out what the local market is doing. Here’s one way to quickly assess what’s happening in your local real estate market.

County records.

Taking a quick look at your local market in many areas will likely be as near as your county assessor’s office. In the state’s where property tax assessment has been a big issue, the county tax assessor has probably put some incredible effort into making assessed values reflect the real market values. That means that your county assessment records will be a true indication of local real estate market trends.

But how do you gain access to those records? You simply walk in and ask. If you want, you can explain your mission. But for the most part, all government records of this type are public records. That means anyone can have access to these records. Appraisers and real estate agents use them to conduct their own research into local market analysis, as well as to gain information about a particular piece of property and to look at local real estate market trends.

How do you use these records to evaluate local market trends? It’s actually pretty easy to get a basic understanding by checking just a few pieces of property that have sold at least a couple of times over the past few years. If a house sold for $100,000 in 2000, then sold again for the same amount in 2004, you can infer several bits of information about the local market in that area. The local market value is holding steady or rising slightly, and there’s a demand for property in that area are among the trends you can gather, but only if you can support that with the sale of other properties in that local market.

Evaluating the local market isn’t as easy as that, but it is a good first step, if you keep some rules in mind. Not all sales will reflect the market. Pay attention to the buyers and sellers. If a huge corporation purchased property adjacent to property the company already owned, it may not be reflective of the current market value. Owners may have been overly willing to sell because of the proximity, or the company may have been overly anxious to buy for the same reason. Either will skew the amount paid.

Family transactions also may reflect something other than current market trends. When a grandchild buys out the other heirs for property, a falsely high or low price may be indicated.

Using a little common sense, courthouse records may very well be the least expensive and most easily attained records you can find to get a basic grasp of local market trends.