With the click of a mouse, homeowners today can obtain instant quotes on the value of their most significant asset: their homes. Banks, insurance companies, real estate brokerages and even media companies offer computer generated property valuations using formulaic software based on publicly available metrics such as square footage, number of rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms and recorded neighborhood sales. These computer-generated estimates, however, lack elementary inspections, critical market perspective and professional intuition, so they fall grossly short of the mark
If 2005 was the year of the bubble that wasn’t, how will this sixth year of the second millennium play out for buyers, sellers and brokers?
Last year, boom and bust stories about the real estate market dominated the press with dramatic headlines. For the most part, however, the reports were conflicting, and the media spin on medians and averages proved to be confusing ultimately for readers. There were contradictory interpretations of statistics as data was misread and facts were distorted—particularly in the year’s last quarter which saw a decided drop in the volume of sales, though not in the price of transactions.
