Remember what first attracted you to your house when you bought it? What excited you about its most appealing features? Now that you're selling your home, you'll need to look at it as if you were buying it all over again.

Two things to consider in valuing a home are, first, how does it compare to similar homes that have sold recently? Is the asking price fair? And second, what value do you place on the advertised features and amenities? Yes, other people might value them highly, but do you?

Market activity also determines how easy or difficult it is to find accurate comps. In a "hot" or busy market, with sales happening all the time, you're likely to have lots of comps to choose from. In a less active market finding reasonable comps becomes harder. And if the home you're looking at has special design features, finding a comparable property is harder still. It's also necessary to know what's going on in a given sub-segment. Maybe large, high-end homes are selling like hot cakes, but owners of smaller houses are staying put, or vice versa.

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