{"id":16851,"date":"2020-09-01T14:46:10","date_gmt":"2020-09-01T21:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=16851"},"modified":"2020-09-01T14:46:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-01T21:46:10","slug":"the-trick-to-pricing-real-estate-it-aint-comping-houses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/16851\/the-trick-to-pricing-real-estate-it-aint-comping-houses\/","title":{"rendered":"The trick to pricing real estate? It ain\u2019t comping\u00a0houses…<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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You: \u201cWhere should I price this house?\u201d Me: \u201cHow much are the buyers willing to pay?\u201d You: \u201cHow am I supposed to know about the buyers?\u201d Me: \u201cPrecisely!\u201d<\/p><\/div>For a year-and-a-day, I was an iBuyer pricing algorithm.<\/p>\n

When Zillow announced they were going into the cash-incineration<\/s> iBuying business, I looked for opportunities to find out more. Amazingly, I lucked into a job doing CMAs for Zillow’s pioneer broker on the ground. What’s amazing? Until then, I had never done a CMA in my two-decade career as a Realtor.<\/p>\n

I could and can price to the dollar, but I never did anything beyond reading the comps like tea leaves. Zillow was a huge gift to me that way. I got to work with appraisers, and I learned why their comp selections always look so alien to me. I did my best to teach them my way of comping, but I only made a real dent in two of them.<\/p>\n

Their tricks were great, and I had fun playing with them. I had never in my life adjusted for anything, for one thing, but I had never ever crossed an arterial street to get a comp before, either: It was \u2013 and still is \u2013 a great big deal to get me to leave the subject property’s subdivision.<\/p>\n

My biggest influence on them was time. Until March of this year, the price trajectory in the Valley of the Ever-Fecund Sun had been steady as a clock since 2014 or so. They were going back three months for comps, adjusting for time. I rocked them to a year, and I did not hesitate to go back longer than that. Better to have closer comps, adjusted, than a false confidence in more-recent but less-comparable sales.<\/p>\n

Zillow was a hoot. The appraisers would do things I think are crazy \u2013 like comping one- to two-story homes \u2013 but Zillow’s minions would not understand why wildly divergent product lines \u2013 Ikea kitchens versus Sub-Zero kitchens, for example \u2013 cannot be compared for pricing purposes. If you’re looking for defects in any AVM, it’s there, the inability to reconcile proximate Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You: \u201cWhere should I price this house?\u201d Me: \u201cHow much are the buyers willing to pay?\u201d You: \u201cHow am I supposed to know about the buyers?\u201d Me: \u201cPrecisely!\u201dFor a year-and-a-day, I was an iBuyer pricing algorithm. When Zillow announced they were going into the cash-incineration iBuying business, I looked for opportunities to find out more. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,6,5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-ibuyers","7":"category-marketing","8":"category-real-estate","9":"category-technology","11":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":271,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/271\/zindicated-is-this-zillowed-seller-proof-of-the-need-for-even-greater-zillification\/","url_meta":{"origin":16851,"position":0},"title":"Zindicated! Is this Zillowed seller proof of the need for even greater Zillification?","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 31, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Frankly, no. Christine at NY Houses 4 Sale cites a Realty Times article about a seller who immediately pulled his home off the market after a prospective buyer confronted him with a Zestimate $500,000 below his assessed value. His conclusion is that Zillow.com has made his home unmarketable. My first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17107,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/17107\/the-news-is-not-that-zillow-is-going-to-have-agents-its-going-to-have-newbies-for-agents\/","url_meta":{"origin":16851,"position":1},"title":"The news is not that Zillow is going to have agents. It\u2019s going to have newbies for\u00a0agents.","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 23, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Housing Wire: A Zillow spokesperson told HousingWire that these people are already employed with Zillow, and will be getting real estate licenses. Zillow said it will not be recruiting for these positions. It's a boiler-room job \u2013 in the same article, George Laughton says Zillow still won't be getting its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "iBuyers"","block_context":{"text":"iBuyers","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/ibuyers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/austin-distel-97HfVpyNR1M-unsplash-480x320.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1271,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1271\/web-site-builds-community-of-real-estate-consumers-vendors\/","url_meta":{"origin":16851,"position":2},"title":"Web site builds community of real estate consumers, vendors","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 6, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This is me in today's Arizona Republic (permanent link). This is adapted from my main post Tuesday night, of course. I get 350 words in the paper. They cut me today to 330, so I used my own version of the text for the permanent link. But here's the sad\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2121,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2121\/zillowcom-upgrades-its-advertising-arsenal-allowing-you-to-target-market-the-joneses-you-want-to-keep-up-with\/","url_meta":{"origin":16851,"position":3},"title":"Zillow.com upgrades its advertising arsenal, allowing you to target-market the Joneses you want to keep up with","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been saying this for a long time: Buyers are temporarily interested in listings. Owners are always interested in their homes. Zillow.com wants buyers, hence the move to accept listings feeds. But what they really want are owners, people who will come back to the site again and again, potentially\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1257,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1257\/greg-peeing-on-the-tree-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":16851,"position":4},"title":"Planet Zillow.com: Burgeoning Realty.bot grows, potentially, to become a self-sustaining residential real estate eco-system","author":"Greg Swann","date":"April 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's the news. We'll circle back for details and implications. Zillow.com, the national Realty.bot growing out of the popular automated home valuation service, is releasing a new version of its popular web-based real estate portal tonight. Dubbed Zillow 5, the new functionality comes in three broad categories:Any user of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Enduring Interest"","block_context":{"text":"Enduring Interest","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/enduring-interest\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":356,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/356\/zillowcom-bites-the-wrong-bullet-in-preference-to-telling-one-simple-truth-it-will-propagate-thousands-of-tiny-lies\/","url_meta":{"origin":16851,"position":5},"title":"Zillow.com bites the wrong bullet: In preference to telling one simple truth, it will propagate thousands of tiny lies . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's a simple fact, one of the most important reasons why homeowners need professional representation to market their houses: Diogenes himself could not find an objective seller. It's not enough to detail everything that's wrong with the neighbor's homes, the more important job, in a listing appointment, is to tell\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16851"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16859,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16851\/revisions\/16859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}