How your weekly report is calculated

Which sales count as comparable

A comparable is a recorded, closed, arms-length sale of a home near yours that passes every band below. The report reads 24 months of them.

Where

Sales within 1.5 miles of your home where the county's records place every sale, otherwise sales in your subdivision. If that ground does not hold enough sales to read a direction, it widens by distance to 1.5, 3, 5 and then 8 miles, stopping at the first radius that does. A home on 1 acre or more keeps going to 12 and 20 miles: acreage is compared with acreage, and there is much less of it. The report names the ground it read, and every later report reads the same ground.

Arms-length only

Sales the county does not qualify as market transactions are dropped: transfers between family members, quit-claim and corrective deeds, multi-parcel deeds, and any sale at $1,000 or less.

Size

Beds within 1 of yours, baths within 1, and living area within 30% either way.

Lot

Two lots under 1 acre always match: on a plat the house sets the price. Once either your home or the sale is on 1 acre or more, the sale's land must be within ×2.5 of yours either way. Eleven acres reads 4.4 to 27.5 acres. A parcel whose land area is not on record is not banded.

Your whole holding

Where you also own vacant land within a quarter mile of the house parcel, it is added to your lot size and land value.

The price trend

Each sale's price per square foot is its sale price divided by its living area. The trend is read from those figures in four ways.

Momentum: 3 months against 12

The average price per square foot of sales in the last 3 months, against the average over the last 12. Reported as a percentage. This is the main input to the verdict.

The 24-month trend line

Sales are averaged by closing month, and a least-squares line is drawn through the monthly averages. Its slope × 12, divided by the average level, is the trend in percent per year. It needs at least 3 months with sales.

Latest month against your basis

Your basis is what you paid, divided by your living area (what you told us you paid, or the county's record of your purchase). The latest month with sales is compared with it.

Volume and spread

Volume compares the last 3 months' pace of closings per month with the last 12 months' pace. Spread is the gap between the 25th and 75th percentile of price per square foot over 12 months, as a share of the median: a tight spread means buyers agree on value; a wide one means condition and finish are doing much of the pricing.

The verdict

The verdict is decided by fixed rules on the trend, in this order. It needs at least 4 comparable sales and a momentum figure; without them the report says Not enough sales yet.

↘︎ Cooling

Momentum at −3% or lower; or the trend line at −3% a year or lower; or the latest month below your basis while momentum is negative.

↑ Window open

Momentum at +3% or higher, the latest month at or above your basis, and the trend line not falling.

↗︎ Firming — watch

Momentum at +1% or higher and the latest month at or above your basis.

→ Flat — hold

Anything else.

What your home is worth on these sales

Two reads, and the report says which one leads.

Price per square foot

The median price per square foot of the last 12 months' comparable sales × your living area, with the 25th to 75th percentile as the range. With 6 or more sales the report also fits price per square foot against living area, because larger homes usually sell for less per foot, and reads the line at your size.

Building + land

The county appraiser carries a land value and a total just value for every parcel; the difference is its value of the building. The read is kb × your building + kl × your land, where kb and kl are what the comparable sales actually sold for against the appraiser's building and land values. With 6 or more sales, kb and kl are fitted by least squares on relative error; with 3 to 5, or when a fitted multiplier falls outside 0.4 to 3.0, one multiplier stands in for both (the median of sale price ÷ just value). The range is the middle half of how far the comparables' own prices land from the same read of themselves. The last 12 months are used when they hold 3 such sales; otherwise all 24.

Which leads

Building + land leads when your land is 2 acres or more, or 35% or more of the appraiser's value: there, price per square foot would price your land as if it were the comparables' land. Otherwise price per square foot leads, and building + land is shown beside it. The gain or loss against what you paid uses whichever leads, before selling costs.

A second building read

Each comparable's price less its land (the appraiser's land value × kl), divided by its living area, is a land-removed building price per square foot. Its median × your living area, plus your land, is shown as a cross-check.

How well each read predicts a sale, measured on 1,210 qualified Lake County sales from October 2024 to October 2026, each valued against the other sales on similar lots: median error on homes of 2 acres or more was 24.4% for price per square foot, 15.2% for the land-removed building read, and 8.5% for building + land; on lots under 1 acre, 10.2%, 8.2% and 5.3%.

The closest matches

The report names the three comparables most like your home. Each sale is scored on the gap in living area (as a share of yours), plus the gap in year built over 30 years, plus half its distance as a share of the 1.5-mile radius, plus half its age as a share of two years, less 0.15 when it is in your own subdivision. The lowest scores are the closest matches.

What the numbers are not

• Not an appraisal. An appraiser inspects the home and adjusts each sale for condition, finish, view and features. These reads do none of that.
• They inherit the county's record. A renovation the appraiser has not picked up, or a living area recorded wrong, carries into the read.
• They know nothing the public record does not: no listings, pending sales, or off-market activity.
• The verdict is a rule applied to recorded sales, not advice to list, hold, or price at any number.