There are many reasons why you may want to find out just how much your home is worth. With all of this speculation about house price falls, you may want to find out how much your property is worth simply to keep an eye on any decline in value. You may be thinking of selling up, and therefore want to find out how much you can put your house on the market for. Or maybe you are thinking of taking out a loan secured against your home and need to know what your equity levels are. Whatever your reasons for wanting to find out the value of your property there are some easy steps that you can take to do this.

Of course, you can get a professional valuation on your home, and whilst this will provide you with a more indepth report and an accurate valuation it may also cost you a pretty penny. If you do not want to fork out on a professional valuation you may want to consider using the services of an estate agent in order to find out how much your property is worth. If you do decide to use an estate agent to get a valuation on your home you should make sure that you get a valuation from at least three estate agents in order to get a more accurate idea of how much your property is worth.

If you only get a valuation from one estate agent you run the risk of under-valuation or over-valuation depending on whether the estate agent wants to try and get a quick sale on your home or wants to make more commission in the event that you do sell your home. By getting a second opinion from another estate agent you can get a better idea of whether the first figure was accurate – however, you may find that the second valuation provides you with a figure that is significantly higher or lower than the first. Using a third estate agent to value your property can help to solve this issue, and can give you a firmer idea of the value of your home.

You should make sure that you do not tell the estate agencies that you have already had a valuation from another estate agent, otherwise they may base their valuation on the figure that the previous estate agent gave to you – by not disclosing this information you can increase the chances of getting an unbiased valuation that is not based on another agent's opinion.

In addition to getting valuations from a number of estate agents, you can also check on the prices of similar properties in the same area yourself by checking out the property pages in newspapers and the prices from estate agents. This will further help you to get a better idea of how much your property is really worth.