Cleburne has 599 sales of pre-1980 houses and 1,113 built since 2015 — and only 166 from the whole of 2000 to 2014. It is two markets with fifteen missing years between them, and a comparable from one will not price the other.
Cleburne is south of Fort Worth via Chisholm Trail Parkway or I-35W, a manageable run that keeps travel inside the quoted fee.
Cleburne’s housing stock is barbelled more sharply than anywhere else in the four counties.
| Year built | Sales | Median price | Median $/sf |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before 1980 | 599 | $224,900 | $152 |
| 1980–1999 | 259 | $295,000 | $175 |
| 2000–2014 | 166 | $342,450 | $180 |
| 2015 and later | 1,113 | $302,854 | $167 |
599 sales of houses built before 1980. 1,113 built since 2015. And 166 from the entire fifteen years in between.
That is the shape of a town that stopped building and then started again hard. For an appraisal it creates a specific and awkward problem: if the subject was built in 1998 or 2006, the genuinely comparable stock is thin on the ground and the easy comparables are either eighty years older or twenty years newer. Bracketing requires going outside the immediate area, and the report should say so rather than quietly using what is close.
Note too that the newest cohort does not carry the highest price per foot — 2000–2014 does, at $180, against $167 for 2015 and later. Same composition effect as the neighbouring markets: recent building here is production housing on small lots.
The subdivision recorded as Original Cleburne accounts for 337 sales — 15.8% of everything that trades here — at a median of $210,000. No other single area comes close; Meadowbrook Estates is next at 4.9%.
A core that large and that old is its own appraisal problem. Lot sizes, house sizes, construction methods, additions, foundation types and the degree of renovation vary enormously inside it, and the subdivision name on the record tells you almost nothing about which of those you are looking at. Two houses on the same street can be forty years and a complete renovation apart.
In a market where a sixth of sales come from one pre-war core, the renovation state is frequently the largest single difference between the subject and the comparables — and it is the item the record describes least reliably.
Cleburne’s median sale is $289,000 at $164 per square foot — the lowest of Weatherford, Granbury, Burleson and Cleburne. Only 0.4% of sales clear a million dollars.
| Lot size | Sales | Median price | Median $/sf | Median days to contract |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under a quarter acre | 1,396 | $280,000 | $163 | 61 |
| A quarter acre to an acre | 489 | $286,000 | $160 | 40 |
| One to five acres | 188 | $462,500 | $213 | 52 |
| Five acres and up | 64 | $632,500 | $286 | 74 |
Land still behaves the way it does everywhere else once you clear an acre — $213 per foot from one to five acres and $286 above five, against $163 in town. But the in-town bands are almost flat against each other, which means a quarter-acre lot and a half-acre lot are not meaningfully different to this market, and an adjustment between them should be small or absent rather than scaled from a rate.
Johnson County is the second strongest market measured for a workshop: 4.7% of sales carry one and it adds about 7.0%, behind Parker at 7.6% and ahead of Tarrant at 4.9%.
What the record does not carry is the size of the building, its eave height, the roll-up door dimensions, the slab, whether it is insulated or climate controlled, or whether there is finished space inside. None of that appears in any field, and all of it moves the number — a shop with electrical service contributes roughly double one without.
So on an assignment with outbuildings I measure them rather than estimating them, and I record the door and the power. The full analysis is in what a workshop adds to a property.
If this is an estate or a date-of-death valuation, the retrospective search has to be wide enough to find genuinely comparable property, and the reasonable exposure time for this market is a median 56 days to contract, and longer again on acreage. Both belong in the report rather than in a conversation afterwards.
If this is a divorce, the contested number is usually the part the record describes worst — land, outbuildings, or condition — rather than the house itself.
If this is a tax protest, the district resolves the same comparability problem described above with mass appraisal. An individually developed opinion that isolates the land, the outbuildings and the condition is a different document.
If you are selling, write down what the record will not carry: outbuilding size, door, power, slab and finish; renovation scope and dates; anything about the land that a search cannot see. If you do not put it in the remarks, no buyer’s filter and no appraiser’s grid will find it.
Land and residential
“Terrence is very knowledgeable on the DFW market, and provides thorough appraisal reports. I'd recommend Terrence for any residential and land appraisal needs.”John Staab · Google review
Yes. Cleburne and the surrounding Johnson County area are a regular part of my coverage, along with Tarrant, Parker, Johnson and Hood. Assignments are one-to-four unit residential and residential land, consistent with a Texas Certified Residential credential.
$289,000 across 2,137 closed sales, at a median $164 per square foot, on a median 1,804 square feet of living area and a median lot of 0.20 acres. 11.8% of sales sit on an acre or more.
A median 56 days to contract market-wide, though it varies sharply by lot size. Acreage takes materially longer. For an estate or a divorce where a reasonable marketing period matters, the figure for the relevant lot band is the one that belongs in the report.
A missing middle. The housing stock is barbelled between pre-1980 and post-2015, so bracketing a 1990s or 2000s house means searching well outside the immediate area. That is the problem the assignment has to solve, and it is the part a form filled from the nearest four sales gets wrong.
Johnson County is the second strongest market measured for a workshop: 4.7% of sales carry one and it adds about 7.0%, behind Parker at 7.6% and ahead of Tarrant at 4.9%. Size, eave height, door dimensions, slab, insulation and finish are not recorded in the MLS at all, so they have to be measured on site.
It depends on the property and the assignment, and acreage with outbuildings takes longer on site and longer to research. I quote a written fee and a firm delivery date before any work begins, usually within one business hour, and the fee is never contingent on the value reported.
Written fee quote, typically within one business hour. Send the address and the reason you need the value — estate, divorce, tax protest, pre-listing — and I will confirm the fee and a delivery date before any work starts.
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