Homeowners who plan on moving at some point in the future are likely to ask the question: "What will my home be worth?" Ah, if only there was a real estate magic eight ball that could reveal the price tag sellers should slap on their homes! Location and real estate market conditions help determine your home's value, but unfortunately, pinpointing an exact number is far from a perfect science.

But there are certain tried and true tactics you can employ to help you get a ballpark figure for your home's worth. Below, our real estate experts offer their most reliable methods.

'What will my home be worth?'
Projecting out what your home will be worth in just a couple of years can be challenging, but in a conservative market, 3% appreciation per year is a good guideline to use, says Liane Jamason, broker associate at Smith & Associates Real Estate, in Tampa Bay, FL.

So, using that number, you can estimate that a $500,000 home you bought today could be worth $671,958 in 10 years. Of course, keep in mind that exceptions abound. In some markets, you can see jumps in value of 15% to 20% over short periods of time.

This year's spring home-buying season is when the frenzy typically kicks off for the year, appears to be off to a slow start—particularly in and around some of the nation's most expensive, coastal cities.

​That's because for the fifth month in a row, the number of homes on the market surged 6% in February compared with the same time the year before, until last year the nation had seen several years of housing shortages.

It suggested that the housing market is starting on a cooler footing this spring than last spring. That's partly a result of the long-term housing shortage that pushed prices up so high, fewer people were able to actually buy a home.
The big, pricey, tech-fueled cities on the West Coast saw the greatest influx of homes on the market. The nation's most expensive market, Silicon Valley's San Jose, CA, experienced a 125% jump in the metro area in February compared with a year earlier. (The metropolitan area includes the main city and the surrounding suburbs.) The median home price in the metro is a whopping $1,079,800—and that's down 10% from the previous year!

Failing to shop around for a mortgage: Studies found that 50 percent of all buyers applied to just one lender for their mortgage. But that could be leaving money on the table. Shopping around can save you, on average, $430 in interest in the first year for those with a fixed-rate.
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Believing the 20 percent down payment myths: Another common mistake is believing you have to put down more of a down payment than you really do. Seventy-one percent of current homeowners say they made down payments of 20 percent or less, according to U.S. Census Bureau data (of those, 23 percent of buyers put down between 11 to 20 percent; 16 percent put down 6 to 10 percent; and 32 percent put down 5 percent or less). In markets where home prices are rising at a faster clip, buyers may find it time to buy now rather than wait until they saved a 20 percent down payment.