A Dartboard By Any Other Name Estimated Value: $615,101 Estimated Value Range: $547,440 – $682,762 Confidence Score: 82 Forecast Standard Deviation: 11 –“Estimated Value” by CoreLogic; Hennepin County tax records excerpt. Sorry, estimating a home’s value — with a range of more than $100k (or $136k, in the case of this Eden Prairie home, above) —...Read More
(And You Should, Too) My job — and every other Realtor’s — would be a lot easier if Zillow simply didn’t exist. Notwithstanding its (inexplicable to me) popularity, information on Zillow is frequently wrong, dated — or both. Oh, and one more thing: Zillow’s margin of error for calculating home values — the “hook” that...Read More
Edina Realty Takes on the Third Party Aggregators, Cont. If you’re joining the action “already in progress,” as it were, here’s what you missed: Edina Realty announced 10 days ago that it was pulling its listings from third-party aggregators such as Trulia. Then all Hell broke loose. See, “Edina Realty Steals a Page From Southwest Airlines, the...Read More
Omitting Seller-Paid Points Want to know why many real estate Web sites — never good at estimating home prices — are off by at least another 3% now? Because Seller-paid points are a fixture of many house deals these days, yet the government data that many real estate sites rely on don’t report that. Instead, Hennepin County and...Read More
Appraisers vs. Realtors vs. Trulia “257-0”. That’s the number of times — including twice just this morning — that I’ve been called by appraisers wanting the “scoop” on a property I’ve sold, vs. the number of times I’ve called an appraiser to find out the same. Which makes sense: as the listing agent, I’m thoroughly acquainted...Read More
Lies, Damn Lies, & (Real Estate) Statistics — Cont. CoreLogic says its estimate is within 10% of a sales price for between about 55% and 75% of homes, depending on the region. Zillow’s estimate is within 10% of sales price almost half the time. –“Housing Statistics Hit Rough Waters“; The Wall Street Journal (Jan. 8,...Read More
