A comparative market analysis, usually shortened to CMA, is an estimate of what your home would likely sell for right now, built by comparing it to similar properties that recently sold nearby. Real estate agents prepare them, usually for free, when you are thinking about listing. A good comparative market analysis is one of the more useful documents you can get your hands on as a seller. It is also frequently misunderstood, so it is worth knowing exactly what it is, how the number gets built, and where it stops being reliable.
How the Number Gets Built
Every CMA follows roughly the same logic, whether it runs three pages or thirty.
Step one: find comparable sales. The agent searches for homes that recently sold and are genuinely similar to yours. “Similar” means close in location, square footage, bedroom and bathroom count, age, style, lot size, and condition. Recency matters, since a sale from two years ago describes a different market.
Step two: adjust for differences. No two houses match exactly, so each comp gets adjusted. If a comp had a finished basement and yours does not, its sale price is adjusted down to estimate what it would have sold for without one. If yours has a new roof and the comp had a failing one, the comp adjusts up. These adjustments are informed estimates, not formulas, and different agents will land on different numbers.
Step three: look at active and expired listings. Homes currently for sale show your competition. Homes that failed to sell show where the market said no.
Step four: produce a range. A well-built CMA gives a range and a recommended asking price, along with the reasoning. If you receive a single number with no comps attached, ask to see the work.
CMA vs. Appraisal vs. Automated Estimate
These three get treated as interchangeable, and they are not. They are produced by different people, for different reasons, with different levels of rigor.
| Comparative market analysis | Appraisal | Automated estimate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prepared by | Real estate agent | Licensed appraiser | Software |
| Purpose | Help set an asking price | Protect a lender’s collateral | Give a rough public estimate |
| Sees inside the home | Usually | Yes, typically | No |
| Typical cost | Free | Paid, usually by the buyer | Free |
| Used at closing | No | Yes | No |
The automated estimates you see on national real estate sites, the Zestimate-style figures, are generated from public records and past sales without anyone visiting the property. They can be reasonable in dense neighborhoods full of similar homes. They tend to be much less reliable for Vermont, where housing stock is old, varied, and spread out, and where a beautifully maintained 1890 farmhouse and a neglected one look identical in the data. Our post on how much your Vermont house is worth digs further into that gap.
Where a CMA Runs Out of Road
A CMA is only as good as the comps behind it, and some properties simply do not have good comps.
Rural and unique properties. If the nearest genuinely similar sale is fifteen miles away and two years old, the comparison gets thin. Vermont has a lot of properties like this: hillside camps, converted barns, homes on large acreage, houses with outbuildings that add value to some buyers and none to others.
Distressed condition. This is the big one. Most CMAs are built from comps that sold in ordinary, market-ready condition. If your home needs a new roof, has a failed septic, water in the basement, fire damage, or decades of deferred maintenance, the CMA number describes a house that does not exist yet. The repair estimate you would need to reach that number often is not in the report. If that is your situation, see major repairs or fire and water damage.
Thin markets. In smaller towns, a handful of sales a year means one unusual transaction can skew everything.
It is not a promise. A CMA is an opinion about probable price. It is not a guarantee, and homes routinely sell above and below the CMA figure.
What a CMA Does Not Subtract
Here is the part sellers most often miss. A CMA gives you a likely sale price, not your take-home. To find what you would actually keep, subtract:
- Agent commission, commonly around 5 to 6 percent
- Repairs and updates a buyer will ask for after inspection
- Cleaning, staging, and photography
- Seller-side closing costs
- Carrying costs for every month the home is on the market: mortgage, taxes, insurance, utilities, upkeep
Our breakdown of the cost of selling a house in Vermont walks through each of these, and how to price your Vermont house to sell covers turning a CMA into an actual asking price.
A Cash Offer Is Calculated a Completely Different Way
This is worth being blunt about, because comparing the two numbers side by side without understanding them leads people to feel insulted when they should not.
A cash offer does not start from a CMA. It starts from the after-repair value, what the home would be worth once it is fully fixed and market-ready, and then subtracts three things: the cost of the repairs, the holding costs while that work happens and the home resells, and a margin for the buyer’s work and risk.
Because of those subtractions, a cash offer is typically below a retail CMA figure, sometimes well below on a house that needs significant work. That is arithmetic, not an opinion about your home.
The honest comparison is not CMA price versus cash offer. It is your net after everything on the retail path, months from now and not guaranteed, versus the lower cash number with no commission, no repairs, no cleaning, no showings, and a known closing date. Sometimes the listing wins that comparison by a lot. Sometimes it does not. Our post cash offer vs. realtor in Vermont runs both columns side by side.
Get Both Numbers Before You Decide
There is no downside to having a real CMA in hand and a cash offer next to it. Agents provide CMAs for free. We make offers for free. Two honest numbers beat one guess.
We buy houses as-is across Vermont, from Burlington and Rutland to small towns most buyers never drive through, and we will explain exactly how we reached our figure.
If you would like a free, no-obligation cash offer to compare against a CMA, reach out through our contact page or call (802) 780-0780. If listing is the better path for you, we will say so.