Peter Quinn

A suggestion might be is to find a real estate buyer, then ask him or her if you can bdog for/with them, then see what your reply is!

Your on the right track just keep pushing forward, there are enough solid articles on the blog her to get you started.
Bill

I guess I missed that one! I need to look into this more……

I am responding to your comment, on our blog above, where the article I wrote titled “Never Use Zillow.com To Comp Properties, Here’s Why” is parked.

Thank you for the reply it provides great discussion for inquiring minds. You had mentioned about the Zillow and its ability to comp. My article really did cover most of this.

Zillow does not have the ability to comp in subdivisions only, nor does it have the capability to see whats listed for sale in the subdivision. Both are very critical when you are writing the check/cash for say $100-$200,000 dollars to buy a house and close in 3-5 business days.

In this instance an individual or investor needs the best software money can buy, wouldn’t you agree? The proprietary software I am talking about is the multiple listing service (MLS) which the Realtors use.

Also it’s critical to see what houses are available for sale in a subdivision or area here is why. Say you have a house you want to comp (this is called running a comparable market analysis)on, yet there are 15 others on the market for sale in that subdivision. You must take that into consideration in making a buying decision because your subject houses’ value just plummeted.

The reverse is true to, if you know that three is no other houses like yours available in the subdivision then you can increase your price.

These are a few reasons why you need the MLS to seriously comp properties. That said, for a new investor trying to wrap their minds around running comps, or homeowners who want to get a gross ideal of what there place is worth, Zillow is just in fine. There is a place in the world for everything!

That “subdivision” feature is really cool but your critique of Zillow is not really accurate. Just to clarify, the Zillow comps algorithm does not just pull a list of recent sales in a set radius but rather it attempts to select nearby homes that have recently sold and that are similar to the home in question. It’s important to remember that the list on Zillow is a list of *suggested* possible comps that is intended to be paired down by the user and so, we cast a wide net and let the user select the most relevant comps from the suggested list and so, you should certainly expect some of the homes in Zillow’s list of possible comps to be poor comparables.

I think that it is a very cool feature that some MLS’ allow agents to only pull recent sales within a sub-division at the click of a button. I also agree that this is important when dealing with spec-homes in housing tracts. There is no such a button on Zillow but you can actually do exactly the same thing by filtering the list of Zillow’s comps using the map of comps Zillow provides. It may take a few more clicks but there is not a huge difference between approaches.

Regardless of the system you have access to, you should probably never rely on an algorithm alone to pick your comps for you. Using Zillow, users can search and filter all of the recent sales for a detailed online comps analysis that bypasses the recommended comps list. Frankly, this is the most thorough approach and the one I would expect many pro’s to take.

I like your site and wanted to know if you would be interested in exchanging blogroll links.

Thanks in advance