The GroundWork Report

A market data report — not an appraisal, and not an opinion of value.

Every credible conclusion about a home starts in the same place: the public record, the closed sales around it, and the market they sold into. The GroundWork Report is exactly that groundwork, done rigorously and explained in plain English — the homework an appraisal is built on, before any judgment is applied. It is built from the same data sources my appraisals use. What it deliberately does not contain is a value conclusion: it shows you the evidence and teaches you how to read it, so you can see for yourself where your home sits. It is also far more extensive than the comparative market analysis (CMA) a real estate agent prepares — every qualifying sale rather than a curated few, with the screening disclosed, the public record included, and an honest read of how strong the data actually is.

See a complete report before you order. A full sample is published here — every section, every table, the estimator sliders, all of it live: read the sample GroundWork Report. It is a real assignment with the identifying details removed: the client, the street address, the parcel number and the ownership record are withheld, and the comparable sales are shown by block rather than by house number. Every figure in it — the market statistics, the sales, the tier medians, the data-strength read — is genuine and unaltered. The sample is anchored to a past valuation date, so it also shows you exactly how a date-of-death or divorce assignment reads.

What's inside — section by section

1. Results at a Glance. A one-page summary table up front: how many comparable sales qualified, the raw price range they point to, the median price per square foot of the closest matches, what a home of your exact square footage computes to at that median, the median sale price, and the data-strength rating — each line pointing to the section where it's explained.

2. Your property's public record. What the county carries on your parcel, laid out and translated: living area, lot size, year built, bedrooms and baths, stories, garage, property type, zoning, subdivision, census tract, APN and legal description, the owner of record, the recorded sale and transfer history, and the full assessment — land, improvements, total, and the annual tax. Includes a plain-English explanation of why your assessed value is not what your home would sell for — and why under Prop 13 the gap widens every year you own.

3. Market conditions — explained, not just charted. Four month-by-month trend charts (median sale price, median sale price per square foot, closed sales volume, and sale-to-list ratio against days on market), followed by "The Market in Numbers" in six tables: new listings and how they moved, which way prices were heading, what homes actually sold for, how many sold and the months of inventory behind that, what buyers paid as a share of asking price, and a table placing your home among everything that sold in the area — where your square footage, lot size, age and room count fall against the market, with the counts above and below you. Every measure is a now-versus-then comparison written in plain language, and where a figure rests on a methodology choice, that choice is stated beneath the table rather than buried.

4. The comparable sales — five tiers, nothing cherry-picked. Every qualifying closed sale, sorted into five published tiers that widen like circles drawn around your home. Tier 1 is the strictest: living area within ±20%, site size within ±50%, built within 15 years, same ZIP code, within half a mile, and closed within three months. Tier 2 keeps those tolerances but reaches out to a mile and back six months. Tier 3 relaxes size to ±30% and site to ±100%. Tier 4 opens the window to a full year. Tier 5 widens the circle to two miles. The tiers are cumulative — a Tier 1 sale is counted again in every tier below it, so each tier's median is computed on everything that qualifies at that tier, and the medians widen and steady as the rules loosen. Every tier states its own rules, its sale count, its median sale price and its median price per square foot.

Each sale is then listed once, under the tightest tier it satisfies, in a table showing price, price per square foot, lot size, living area, year built, beds and baths, days on market, and straight-line distance and direction from your home — with each figure's difference from your own property shown beneath it. The five Tier 1 sales are additionally written up one by one: what each one matches, where it differs, and what question it leaves open. Two details most reports get wrong are handled explicitly here: a sale qualifies on time if it closed inside the window or went into escrow inside it, so a price agreed before your date still counts; and properties that were still in escrow are counted separately per tier and never folded into a median, because no buyer has paid anything yet. Homes that were offered for sale as of the report's effective date appear in their own table with what happened to each one afterward — and they never enter any median or range, because an asking price is what an owner wanted, not what a buyer paid. For condominiums, site size is disregarded in every tier, since a condominium owner does not own the land.

5. The numbers — and an estimator you move yourself. A tier-by-tier table of median sale price and median price per square foot, each multiplied by your home's own living area so the arithmetic is never a black box. Then the part no other report at this price does: an estimator slider for every tier. Each slider runs across eleven stops, from the lowest price per square foot any sale in that tier produced to the highest, with that tier's median sitting dead centre. You slide it to where you honestly believe your home falls — left toward the dated and the tired, right toward the remodelled and the best-positioned — and it multiplies your chosen figure by your square footage. The result is your estimate from raw, unadjusted sales data, and the report says so above every slider: it is not an appraisal, and it is not the preparer's estimate. A printed copy shows the entire eleven-stop scale, so every figure the slider can produce is on the page either way.

Before the sliders comes a guided exercise: look up the Tier 1 sales' listing photos on Redfin or Zillow, compare kitchens, baths, flooring and finish against your own rooms, and place yourself in the data with your eyes open. After them comes the raw, unadjusted range those closest sales point to for a home of your square footage — stated three separate times as a description of the sales data and not a value conclusion — followed by a frank section on what is not adjusted for: condition, quality, upgrades, pools, solar, garages, views, traffic noise, cul-de-sac versus busy street, lot utility. That list is the reason an appraisal exists, and the reason its conclusion can land well inside this range, at its edge, or outside it.

6. Data strength & complexity. The honest read most reports skip: does the sales data actually bracket your home — are there enough sales both larger and smaller, older and newer, on bigger and smaller lots — or does your property have a characteristic the market rarely produces? You get the counts on each side for each characteristic, and a bottom-line rating: routine, moderately complex, or complex. If your home would be a complex appraisal assignment, you find that out here for $99 — not after paying full price.

The report states its assumptions and limiting conditions in full on page one, and every page is footed with a reminder that it is not an appraisal and contains no opinion of value. Retrospective dates are fully supported — for a date of death, divorce, or Prop 19 matter, the analysis anchors to your valuation date, uses only sales priced by that date, and banners the date on the cover.

How it reaches you. The report is a web page at a private, unguessable link, sent by email — typically within 1 business day of payment. It opens on a phone or a computer with nothing to install, the wider tiers stay collapsed until you open them so the page is readable rather than overwhelming, and a Save report as PDF button produces your own copy with every tier fully expanded. The link is private to you and is not indexed by search engines.

The $99 credit

If the report convinces you a full appraisal is what you need, the entire $99 is credited: a Desktop Appraisal ($449) becomes $350, and a Standard Appraisal ($699) becomes $600. Those are the starting fees for typical properties — complex, remote, or high-liability properties can carry higher appraisal fees, sometimes substantially higher, and your exact fee is always quoted before you commit. The $99 credits in full against whatever that quoted fee is. The credit does not apply to the $299 Basic Desktop, and I do not prepare mortgage appraisals — if a lender will order the appraisal, the $99 cannot be credited toward it (the report can still show you what that appraiser will be looking at).

The GroundWork Report is offered for single-family homes and condominiums only. It is not available for 2–4 unit or multi-family properties, vacant land, manufactured homes, or commercial property. If your property is one of those, contact me and I'll point you to the right service.

This is not an appraisal. No opinion of value is developed or expressed, no one inspects your property, and no adjustments are made to the sales. It is a rigorous, honest presentation of public record and market data — the groundwork an appraisal is built on, at a fraction of the price.

Read the full sample report → — the whole thing, before you spend anything.

Order Your GroundWork Report

Fill in the property and your contact details, then continue to Square's secure payment page. Your report is prepared as soon as the $99 payment lands. Single-family homes and condominiums only — for any other property type, contact me instead of ordering.

Name * Email * Phone Property Street Address *

City *

Zip Code

What is this for? Valuation date (optional — for date-of-death, divorce, or Prop 19, the report anchors to this past date) Anything we should know about the property?

You'll be taken to Square's secure checkout to pay the $99. A confirmation with your order details arrives by email.

Common questions

Is this an appraisal? No. An appraisal is a licensed appraiser's supported opinion of value, developed by inspecting, verifying and adjusting. The GroundWork Report deliberately does none of that — it presents the unadjusted data and shows you how to read it. It cannot be used for lending, court, tax filings or any purpose that requires an appraisal.

Why would I buy it? Because it answers the questions that come before an appraisal: what have homes like mine actually sold for, is my home easy or hard to value, and is a $449–$699 appraisal worth it for my situation. And if the answer is yes, the $99 rolls into it.

How is this different from a Zillow estimate? They are opposites. A Zestimate hands you a number with no support — you cannot see the sales behind it, the screens they passed, or how thin the data was. The GroundWork Report hands you the support with no number invented from it: the same starting evidence an appraiser assembles before developing an appraisal — every qualifying sale, the screens each one passed, and twelve months of market conditions. It reports each tier's median sale price and median price per square foot, shows that arithmetic applied to your home's own square footage, gives you a slider to place your own home inside the raw unit prices the sales actually produced, and tells you honestly how strong or thin the data is — the information a careful reader needs to weigh the evidence and develop their own informed opinion of value. The report itself still expresses none; that judgment is yours, or a full appraisal's.

Is this the same as a realtor's CMA? No — it is considerably more extensive than a typical comparative market analysis. A CMA is usually a handful of agent-selected sales, often chosen to support a listing price, with no disclosure of what was left out or why. The GroundWork Report starts from twelve months of MLS closings and shows every sale that passes the screens — nothing curated away — each disclosed with the tests it passed. On top of that it adds the county public record for your parcel, four market trend charts with now-versus-then measures, a table placing your home among everything that sold in the area by size, age and lot, bracketing counts on each of your home's characteristics, and a data-strength and complexity rating. And unlike a CMA, it tells you plainly when the data is thin instead of papering over it.

What if there aren't enough comparable sales? Then the report says so, plainly — that finding is part of what you're paying for. If fewer than three sales qualify, we refund the fee or apply it to a full appraisal instead of delivering a hollow report.