Definition
A comparative market analysis is a pricing report built from homes similar to yours that have recently sold, are currently listed, or expired without selling. Real estate agents usually put one together for free when they're trying to win your listing or help you decide on an asking price. It matters to you as a seller because it's often your first real signal of what your house might actually be worth, before you spend money on repairs or staging. A CMA is an opinion based on judgment, not a certified valuation, so two agents can hand you different numbers from the same neighborhood. If you're weighing a traditional listing against a direct cash offer, the CMA gives you a starting point to compare against, minus the commissions and repair costs a listing would still require. It's worth asking which comps were used and whether they were adjusted for condition, since that's where most of the guesswork lives.
Example
Karen asked two agents for a CMA on her late mother's three-bedroom ranch in Ohio. One agent used renovated comps and suggested listing at $299,000, while the other pulled sales of homes in similar original condition and came in near $258,000. Karen realized the higher number assumed she'd first spend $20,000 on updates she didn't have the cash or time to make. She used the more conservative CMA to compare against a cash offer she'd received from a local buyer. After factoring in the estimated repair costs, agent commissions, and roughly four months of carrying costs while the home sat listed, the two numbers ended up much closer than she expected. Karen ultimately went with the cash offer, since it let her settle the estate quickly without fronting money she didn't have for renovations she'd never enjoy herself.