Calculate By Hand

• 1). Find the sale price for a home in your neighborhood that has sold within the past few months. The home should have the same number of bedrooms and bathrooms as yours and should have similar square footage. You can find this information by asking the owner of the home or by contacting a realtor in your area.
  
  
• 2). Divide the sale price of that home by its square footage to calculate the price per square foot.
  
  
• 3). Multiply the price per square foot by the square footage of your home. If you do not know your square footage, measure each room, hallway and closet with a tape measure and add the room square footages together.
  
  
• 4). Adjust the value up or down for any special considerations. For example, if the other house has a brand new roof and yours is in need of replacement, subtract the cost of a new roof.
  
  
• 5). Ask a realtor for a comparative market analysis on your home for a more accurate estimate. Realtors will usually do this for free if you are considering selling your home. The analysis looks at the recent sale prices of a few similar homes in your area like in the above steps, but also includes the realtor's professional assessment of your home.
  
  
• 6). Pay an appraisal agency to come to your home and execute a full appraisal. This is the most accurate way to compute your home's value because the appraisers are very experienced with homes in your area and have a set of objective criteria they use to value your home. The criteria include such items as your home's construction quality, floor plan, lot size, landscaping and neighborhood.
  
  

Use Online Calculators

• 1). The Federal Housing Finance Agency projects a home's value by appreciating its purchase price at the rate of other homes in its area. The site is government-run and bases its estimates on government housing price indexes. However, it cannot provide detailed value estimates based on the home's specific features, size and improvements made since being purchased.
  
  
• 2). Cyberhomes estimates the value of a home based on its specific address. The estimation takes such factors as recent sale prices of homes in the area, historical sale prices of the specific home and average cost per square foot in the area into account.
  
  
• 3). Quicken Loans offers a free home value calculator that bases its estimate not only on the home's zip code and purchase price and date, but also on the value of structural improvements made to the home since then.