What is a CMA?

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A CMA is a Comparative Market Analysis. This is the information your Realtor will present you with when you sit down to list your house or decide to put an offer in on a new house. The CMA is a list of for sale and sold properties in your area in a given time period.

When listing your house, the Realtor will look at a CMA from the past 6 months to a year in order to decide what homes in your area are listing and selling for. This is a valuable tool when trying to decide what a fair and reasonable price for your home should be. In order to come up with the best price for your property, you need to compare it to other homes that are as similar to yours as possible. You may see homes on the list that are the same square footage, with the same number of bedrooms and baths and think that your home should be priced like those. By looking at the CMA, your Realtor can recognize that your house may have distinct features that the other houses may not, like a larger garage or more acreage.

Before putting in an offer on a house, your Realtor should consult a CMA to decide if the price for the property is reasonable, or if the owners may have it priced it wrong. What seems like a good price to you may actually be too high. Without a CMA, you may never have known that all the similar homes in the neighborhood sold for thousands less than the one you want. Buying a home is the biggest purchase most people make in their lifetime. By using a Realtor and benefiting from their tools, like CMAs, you can ensure that you are making sound decisions with such an important life step.