Real Estate Comps: How to Pull Them Like an Appraiser

What Counts as a Real Comp (Most "Comps" Aren't)

A comp is not just a nearby house that sold. Appraisers screen on five filters, and a sale has to pass all of them before it belongs in your analysis. Recency: sold within the last 90 days ideally, stretching to 6 months only in slow markets. Distance: within 1 mile in urban and suburban areas, up to 5 miles in rural markets where sales are thin. Property match: the same type - single-family to single-family, condo to condo - and within one bedroom and one bathroom of your home. Size: finished living area within 10-20% of yours, and lot size within 20% for single-family homes in areas where lot premiums exist. Quantity: 3 to 6 qualifying sales, enough to triangulate a reliable range instead of anchoring on one outlier. A neighbor's sale from 14 months ago, or a 4,000-square-foot house compared against your 2,100-square-foot one, tells you almost nothing about what your home is worth today.

The 7.49% Mistake: Trusting an Off-Market Estimate

Here is the error most sellers make before they ever talk to anyone: they check their Zestimate and treat it as their price. Zillow's own published accuracy data shows why that fails. For homes actively listed on the market, the Zestimate's median error is 2.4%. For off-market homes, it jumps to 7.49% - and your home is off-market at the exact moment you are deciding whether to sell. On a $400,000 Florida house, 7.49% is roughly $30,000 of uncertainty in either direction. Redfin's estimate runs a 2.07% median error, but again only for on-market homes. There is a second gap: these portals are MLS-sourced, so off-market sales and for-sale-by-owner transactions never show up in their comp sets. County recorder websites capture those sales. The fix is simple: use Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com to build your first list of recently sold homes, then cross-check against your county's public records before you believe the number.

Adjust Like an Appraiser, Then Compare Your Options

Raw comp prices are a starting point, not a final answer. The standard method: divide each comp's sale price by its square footage, average the price per square foot across your 3-6 comps, and multiply by your home's finished area. Then adjust for condition - a renovated kitchen adds $15,000 to $50,000 depending on the market - and apply a monthly appreciation or depreciation adjustment to any comp older than a few months. Once you have a defensible range, the real question is which selling route captures the most of it. Cash Flow Deals is a Florida real estate investor that connects homeowners directly to vetted FHA, conventional, VA, and DSCR buyers through a novation agreement, and every one of those deals starts with this same comp discipline: recent sales, tight radius, adjusted for condition. Listing-side details run through Silver Door Realty, a licensed Florida brokerage. Because the buyer pool includes financed retail buyers rather than only investors, the comp-supported retail value of your home anchors the number - not a discounted spreadsheet formula. If your own comp pull says your house is worth more than the investor math you have been quoted elsewhere, start at our Florida hub: sell your house in Florida.

Cash Flow Deals is a Florida real estate investor that locks in a net price for a seller's house before repairs are scoped, using a novation-based, flat-fee process arranged through its licensed FL brokerage partner, Silver Door Realty — not a traditional listing, and not a brokerage itself.

Cash Flow Deals turns a strong comp pull into a real seller decision in three steps:

1. Share your comp pull (or let Cash Flow Deals run one) using the same recency, distance, and size filters covered above, so the number holds up against an appraisal, not just an automated estimate.

2. Cash Flow Deals matches your home's comp-supported value to a vetted FHA, conventional, VA, or DSCR buyer through a novation agreement - with Silver Door Realty handling the licensed brokerage side - and typically confirms your net price within 24 hours.

3. You compare that number against your own comps and the traditional-listing math side by side, then choose - with no repair punch list and no financing contingency standing between you and a closing date you pick.