Texas is a non-disclosure state. Sale prices are not public record here — which means every online estimate you have ever seen was built from listing data and tax assessments, not from what houses actually sold for.
I have the closed numbers. Tell me about your house and I will send you a real one, usually the same week.
Takes about a minute. I read every one of these myself.
In most states, what a house sold for is public record. A valuation site pulls those numbers, compares them and produces an estimate that is roughly defensible.
Texas does not work that way. We are one of a handful of non-disclosure states, so the closing price never becomes public. The national sites are therefore estimating from asking prices, tax assessments and square footage — none of which is what somebody actually paid.
That gap is not small, and it moves in both directions. I have seen homes in Crowley listed far under what the market would have paid, and I have sat with sellers who were talked into a number the appraisal was never going to support.
I pull what has genuinely closed near you — same layout, same condition, recent enough to matter — and I tell you what it means, including when the honest answer is that you should wait. A valuation that only ever says "now is a great time to sell" is a sales pitch wearing a spreadsheet.