Start with sold comps, not listings
Asking prices tell you what other sellers hope for. Sold prices tell you what buyers paid. Look for houses that sold in the last three to six months, close by, with a similar size, age and number of bedrooms. In the Bay Area, close by really means close: a freeway, a school boundary or a few blocks toward a busy corridor can move prices more than another bedroom.
If you only find one great comp and three average ones, your house is probably worth the average number. Sellers who anchor on the one great sale usually end up cutting the price later.
Why the tax bill is no help
Your assessed value has very little to do with market value. Under Proposition 13, the assessed value is set when you buy and can rise by at most 2 percent a year after that, as the Board of Equalization explains in its guide to California property taxes. A house bought in 1985 can carry an assessed value that's a small fraction of what it would sell for today.
Here's how big that gap gets. A house bought for $100,000 in early 1985 that kept pace with the Oakland metro area's price index would be worth about $750,000 now. Its assessed value could have grown to about $225,000 at most.
Market line: FHFA all-transactions house price index for the Oakland–Fremont–Berkeley metro area, first quarter of each year, second quarter for 2026. Ceiling line: 2% a year compounded. The cap is a ceiling. In years when California inflation was lower, the allowed increase was smaller, and a sale or new construction resets the assessed value.
The assessor's records are still useful for facts: lot size, recorded square footage and year built. In Alameda County that's the Alameda County Assessor, and each city page on this site links the right county office.
Online estimates are a starting point
Automated estimates can't see inside. They don't know whether your kitchen was redone in 2019 or 1979, whether the foundation is cracked, or whether the garage is now an unpermitted bedroom. On ordinary tract houses they can be close. On older or unusual Bay Area houses they can miss by a lot in either direction. Use them to sanity-check, not to price.
Adjust for condition honestly
Most comps that sold well were updated, staged and inspected. If yours needs a roof, a panel, a sewer lateral or a new kitchen, the as-is value is lower than the after-repair value by roughly what those repairs cost, plus the time and risk of doing them. That gap is exactly where cash offers and listed sales differ, and it's worth knowing before you talk to anyone.
Three ways to get a real number
- A comparative market analysis from a local agent. It's free, and a good one shows the comps they used.
- An appraisal from a licensed appraiser. It costs money, but it's independent. You can check a license with the Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers.
- A written cash offer with the math shown: the after-repair value, the repair estimate and the costs. You can compare it line by line with the other two.
Side by side:
| Where the number comes from | Cost | Sees inside? | Whose side it's on | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online estimate | Free | No | Nobody's. It's an algorithm | A quick sanity check |
| Agent's market analysis (CMA) | Free | Usually, on a walkthrough | The agent's, who wants the listing | Pricing a listed sale |
| Appraisal | Paid | Yes | Independent, from a licensed appraiser | A number nobody is selling you |
| Written cash offer | Free | Yes, on a walkthrough | The buyer's | Knowing what you'd net as-is |
Watch the trend, too
A number from six months ago may be stale. The FHFA House Price Index tracks Bay Area metro areas over time, so you can see whether prices have been flat, rising or falling. It won't price your house, but it tells you which way the comps are drifting.
FHFA all-transactions house price index, quarterly, 1995 Q1 = 100, through the second quarter of 2026. The scale starts at 300. FHFA revises recent quarters as more sales are recorded.
Through the middle of 2026 the index was down 4.8 percent over the year in the Oakland metro area and close to flat in San Francisco and San Jose. Oakland-area prices are still below their spring 2022 peak.
| Metro area | Past year | Past five years | From its peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oakland–Fremont–Berkeley | −4.8% | +8.2% | −7.8% (peak: spring 2022) |
| San Francisco–San Mateo–Redwood City | −0.3% | +17.5% | −1.3% (peak: late 2025) |
| San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara | −1.0% | +27.4% | −1.4% (peak: early 2026) |
Change in the FHFA all-transactions index, second quarter of 2026 compared with the second quarter of 2025 and of 2021.
When you have a value in mind, the calculator on the main page shows what you'd keep listing versus selling for cash.