Marcie Geffner - Bankrate.com
Homebuyers and sellers may be on opposite sides of a home sale, but they have one dilemma in common: They both need to sort through a thicket of prices and valuations to figure out how much a home is really worth.
The holy grail of these prices and valuations is market value, which refers to the price at which a typical seller would be willing to sell the home and a typical buyer would be willing to buy it, according to Leslie Sellers, owner of Leslie Sellers & Associates, an appraisal firm in Knoxville, Tenn.
But while market value is the "goal" or "standard" buyers and sellers would like to ascertain, this amount may be quasi-mythical as it's not necessarily equal to either the appraised value, as determined by a certified appraiser, or the sales price, which refers to the price at which the property was sold.
Read on: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/real-estate/how-much-is-that-house-worth.aspx