What happens after you send this
Short version: you don't get an algorithm's guess. Your address and details come straight to me, and I build you a real comparative market analysis — a CMA — off the same MLS data an appraiser would pull.
That takes me longer than a website takes to load. It's also the difference between a number and an answer.
It's free, and there's no obligation to list. A good share of the people who send this in are a year or two out from selling and just want to know where they stand. That's a perfectly good reason to ask.
One thing I'll usually do first: reach out. A short call, email or text before I start makes the number meaningfully better, because you know things about your house that no record anywhere contains — the basement you finished, the kitchen you redid, the fact that you're weighing a move in March rather than next fall. Five minutes of that changes the analysis.
If we can't connect, you'll still get your valuation. I'll build it from what I have and tell you which assumptions I had to make, so you can correct me on any of them.
Good to know
- I cover the full Omaha metro and Southwest Iowa, including Council Bluffs.
- Licensed in both Nebraska and Iowa, 11 years in.
- If the answer is “now is not your moment,” I’ll tell you that too.
The method
How I actually build a CMA
I start by looking for homes that match yours on four things at once:
- Same style — two-story, ranch, split-level. A ranch and a two-story with identical square footage do not sell for the same number.
- Within about 200 finished square feet of your home.
- Within about a mile.
- Sold in the last six months, so the data reflects this market and not last year’s.
Then comes the part that matters. Each comparable gets credited or debited for what it has that you don't, and what you have that it doesn't — finished basement, garage stalls, an updated kitchen, an extra bath. I use consistent dollar figures for each adjustment so the math stays honest instead of drifting toward whatever answer I want.
When the comps aren't there — an unusual house, a thin neighborhood, an acreage — I bend those rules and tell you exactly where I bent them. At that point it leans on judgment as much as math, and it depends on where the house sits and what the market is doing that month. Anyone who tells you pricing is purely a formula hasn't priced enough houses.
Why Zillow, Redfin, and the county all give you a different number
Look your house up on three different sites and you'll get three different numbers, sometimes tens of thousands apart. That isn't a glitch. Each one runs a different model on different data, and not one of them has been inside your house.
Here's the part that doesn't get advertised: both companies publish how far off they typically are.
Zillow and Redfin figures are median error rates, nationwide, as published by each company on its own site. “Listed” = currently for sale; “not listed” = everything else. County figure is the 2025 level of value for residential property in Douglas County, set by the Nebraska Property Tax Administrator.
Now read the right-hand column
“Not listed” describes every home in Omaha right now except the ones with a sign in the yard. On a $351,000 house — the median closed price across the Omaha area this June — a 7% miss is roughly $24,600.
And median error means half of homes are off by more than that. Not half of the bad ones. Half of all of them.
And your assessed value was never trying to be the answer
The number on your tax statement exists to divide up a tax burden, not to predict what a buyer would pay. Nebraska law lets counties assess residential property anywhere from 92% to 100% of market value, so it's built to land under the real number before anyone makes a single mistake.
Douglas County's official level of value for 2025 came in at 93%, across a sample of 14,560 qualified sales. So on a house that would sell for $351,000, an assessment doing its job perfectly still reads about $326,000.
Two more things make it drift. Assessments are set from a rolling two-year window of past sales, so in a market that climbed 4.8% over the past year they're structurally behind — you can watch it happen in the state's own data, where the countywide ratio slid from 95% to 91.5% across two study years as prices ran ahead of it.
From the state's own ratio study
Douglas County residential, 2025
- Median assessed value: 93.2% of actual sale price
- Sample size: 14,560 qualified sales
- Individual homes ranged from 28.9% to 189% of what they sold for
Read that last line twice. The countywide median is healthy — and individual houses inside that same sample were off by enormous margins in both directions. A number can be right on average and badly wrong about your specific house. That's true of the county, and it's true of every automated estimate on this page.
The wrinkle nobody mentions
These estimates get sharp only after a human sets the price
Compare the two columns. Accuracy improves by roughly three-quarters the moment a home goes on the market — because at that point the model can see the list price and adjust toward it.
So the accuracy figures these sites quote are largely measuring how well the model tracks a number an agent and a seller already decided on. The estimate you've been watching on your own house for the last two years lives in the other column, and it has never been tested against a single real buyer.
Two ways the number goes wrong
Neither of these is a specific client — they're the two patterns I run into most, written out so you can see which one your house might fall into.
Pattern one
When the estimate reads too high
A model assumes your house is roughly average for its neighborhood, because average is the only thing it can assume. It has never seen your kitchen.
Picture a 1,600-square-foot ranch on a street where most homes have been updated over the past decade. Yours still has the original kitchen, a roof near the end of its life, and carpet from a previous administration. The model prices you alongside your neighbors. Buyers won't.
This is the expensive way to be wrong, because it feels good. You list at the number you've been watching, sit for six weeks, cut the price twice, and land under where you'd have finished had you priced it correctly on day one. Homes across the Omaha area sold in a median of 20 days this June at 99.8% of list price. In a market that quick, sitting gets noticed.
Pattern two
When the estimate reads too low
The flip side is a data problem, and it shows up more often than people expect.
Public records are the backbone of every one of these models, and they're only as good as what actually got recorded. A finished basement that never made it onto the county record. A bathroom added without a permit in 2009. Square footage that's simply wrong. A full gut renovation that exists nowhere except in person.
A model can't credit what it doesn't know about. Which means part of the fix is yours: on both Zillow and Redfin you can claim your home and correct the facts yourself. Worth doing whether you're selling or not — it's free and takes about ten minutes.
Three things a website can't see from a satellite photo
This is where a CMA earns its keep. Not because the math is exotic — because somebody has to go look.
The inside of your house
Condition is the single biggest swing factor and the one no algorithm has access to. Updated kitchen or original. New roof or one that's going to come up in negotiation. Finishes that read current or finishes that read 2004. Two identical floor plans on the same street can be $40,000 apart on condition alone.
The 200 feet around it
Backing to a busy road, a commercial lot, or the high school parking lot. A corner lot on a street people cut through. Power lines. A neighbor's yard that affects showings. Which side of a school boundary you landed on after it moved. Models handle some of this and miss plenty of it.
What's happening right now
I can see what's pending — under contract but not yet closed. Those sales won't show up in public data for another month or two, and they're the freshest read available on where prices are actually going. In a market where the median price moved 4.8% year over year, a two-month lag is real money.
Questions people ask before sending this in
How accurate are online home value estimates?
By the companies' own published numbers, the median error on a home that isn't currently listed runs about 7% — roughly $24,600 on a $351,000 Omaha house — and half of homes miss by more than that. They're a reasonable starting point and a poor basis for pricing a listing.
What's the difference between a CMA and an appraisal?
A CMA is my professional opinion of what your home should sell for, built from recent comparable sales. It's free and it's what we use to set a list price. An appraisal is a formal valuation performed by a licensed appraiser, usually ordered by the buyer's lender after you're under contract, and it typically costs several hundred dollars. Similar methods, different purposes.
Why is my county assessed value so different from market value?
Because it isn't trying to match it. Assessed value exists to divide a tax burden, and Nebraska law permits residential assessments between 92% and 100% of market value — Douglas County's official 2025 level of value was 93%. It's also built from a rolling two-year window of past sales, so in a rising market it runs behind. Expect it to sit under your real market value, and don't price off it. More on how that works on my Nebraska property taxes page.
Is this actually free? What's the catch?
It's free and there's no catch. I do these knowing most people aren't ready to sell today, and that some of them will remember who gave them a straight answer when they are. You will not get put on a call list.
How long does it take?
Within 24 hours. I'll typically try to reach you first with a quick call, text or email, because a few minutes of context sharpens the number a lot. If we don't connect, you'll get it anyway, built on what I have, with the assumptions spelled out so you can correct them.
I'm not selling for another year or two. Still worth doing?
Yes — maybe more so. Knowing your real equity position shapes what you can do next, and if there's work worth doing before you list, a year is enough runway to do it properly instead of in a panic. I can also tell you which improvements tend to return their cost around here and which ones don't.
Do you need to come see the house?
Not to get started. I can build a solid analysis from the details you send and what I can see about your neighborhood. But condition is the biggest variable in the whole exercise, so if you're seriously considering selling, a short walkthrough sharpens the number considerably. No pressure either way.
Which areas do you cover?
The full Omaha metro — including Elkhorn, Millard, Papillion, Bennington, Gretna, Bellevue, La Vista and Ralston — plus Southwest Iowa and Council Bluffs. I'm licensed in both Nebraska and Iowa. You can browse neighborhood guides here.
Market figures cited on this page are from the Great Plains Regional MLS Monthly Indicators report for June 2026 (Omaha Area Region), current as of July 13, 2026. Estimate accuracy figures are as published by Zillow and Redfin on their own websites. A comparative market analysis is an opinion of value, not an appraisal. Assessment figures are from the 2025 Reports and Opinions of the Property Tax Administrator, Douglas County, Nebraska Department of Revenue.
Would you rather just talk it through?
Some questions are quicker answered out loud. No script, no pitch — tell me about the house and what you're weighing.
