Comments on: Yet Another Auto Valuation Method

By: Suzi

Suzi — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 02:46:05 +0000

Realquest.com is another interesting AV site. One of my sellers called directly as soon as we looked up her home (I, like their map and aerial:-) She was not happy–Just think if independent buyers out there think these are true home value…

By: Lewis

Lewis — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:04:47 +0000

I like what you are saying about all the web sites,I just can’t get a feel on what my house is worth. With Zillow they say 506,000,Real Estate ABC 406,000, Ditech.com 465,000,Cyberhomes 704,000,Reply.com 491,000. These prices all look good but when we had our house appraised it came back at a great price of 330,000. So it hard to beleave any of these sites.

By: Carol Williams

Carol Williams — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 13:48:07 +0000

Hi Jay,
I’m over from Active Rain to check out your blog. Good stuff here. These AVMs are an interesting phenomenon but hardly a replacement for the expertise of an agent who is in the marketplace every day. Like you said, they don’t see the view, hear the dog bark… blah, blah, blah.

Reminds me of trying to price a home based on assessed value, which is almost always low in our market. Sometimes very low. And, at least, the assessor (or their rep) gets out to actually see the outside of your home once every couple of years. Very few sellers want to price their home based on assesed value. Why would they want to use an AVM that is basically some mathematical formula in a machine in some far away place?

Keep up the good work on your blog.

By: Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy

Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 07:38:43 +0000

As all are reporting here, the variation and accuracy of these AVMs seems to range from “OK” to horrific. But even if you’re a seller in an area were the estimates are “OK”, so what? Would you really want to set your listing price at the “OK” value, or the right value?

Interesting places to look around. Some have some pretty cool data available to ponder. But setting an accurate home value? I think not.

By: Norm Fisher

Norm Fisher — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:53:58 +0000

One has to wonder what value these tools really possess when the “range of value” is $100,000 wide. What can a homeowner get from this, other than confused?

By: Doug Quance

Doug Quance — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:20:51 +0000

Correction to my previous post:

The agent on my team apparently recorded the wrong sales price in ONE of the MLS’s, but the other was correct. (We still don’t understand how that happened… but it did)

By: Doug Quance

Doug Quance — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:13:37 +0000

I think some of these AVM’s are getting info from the MLS, as well as the county tax records.

We have two MLS’s in Atlanta, and when an agent on my team sold her house, she must have mistakenly entered an incorrect amount in the sales price field. ($210K instead of $442K) I caught the error, and had her go in and fix it. Well some AVM’s are showing both prices (for the same day) so I don’t think they got that info from the tax records, as those records were always correct.

Zillow doesn’t have the tax records (even though the transaction closed in February) and shows a market value of $252K.

I tried realestateabc, but their system kept timing out for me.

I, for one, am not threatened in the least by these AVM’s. If nothing else, I think they prove that it takes more than a computer and an Internet connection to place a value on a piece of real estate.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:50:57 +0000

RealEstateABC was the only one that works with Safari (MAC). The prices for my two former houses seemed sage. Maybe a little high but then I’m a pessimist. No data on the new house.

By: Jim Sims

Jim Sims — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 20:49:48 +0000

I tried all three, zillow, realestateabc, and cyberhomes on a property in CA. Only zillow had any data. The others put up garbage. This is a new area but it is about 4 years old so I guess that the two that couldn’t find the location are using very old data.

By: Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy

Jay - The Phoenix Real Estate Guy — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 23:02:08 +0000

Sorry about that Pat. The original comment was held in moderation. I’ve been getting hammered lately with comment spam, so I tweaked my spam catcher a little (and maybe a little too much). It’s a fine balance between allowing the good guys to comment freely and letting the knucklehead spammers through…

*Great* analysis of Cyberhomes over on TransparentRE!!