davis_square | Property values in Davis Sq (and Somerville)

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Property values in Davis Sq (and Somerville)

I just saw in the Somerville News an estimate saying that property values in Somerville declined 2% this year:
http://www.thesomervillenews.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=2&ArticleID=218. Somebody mentioned that Zillow actually reports a loss of about 8%. This is confusing. The Editor of the Somerville News pointed out that Zillow does not have accurate estimates. In my experience, Zillow is pretty on the mark when it comes to sale prices, they seem to be doing lots of good stats on their datasets. Any idea on how to gather additional information on this? I doubt one can trust the Somerville News, given that it was created by the owners of ERA, one of the Somerville Real Estate agencies (clearly, they would not want to advertise that property values are going down around here).

One funny tidbit. Have you received a pack of coupon last week? I received one, and one of the coupons was an ad for ERA, the Norton Group. It says: "Voted #1 Real Estate Company 2000 to 2007 By the readers of the Somerville News"! Now, when many of the readers are ERA employees or relatives of ERA employees, that is a bit of a conflict of interest, isn't it? :)

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The Somerville News attributed the figure to the city assessors, so as far as setting the tax rate, that's the only important figure.

The Warren Group, who publish Banker & Tradesman, is the most authoritative source for Mass home sales data. I just checked their figures and they show about a 6% decline on all sales through October. The number is -13% for single-family homes and -2% for condos.

Of course, sales data do not necessarily reflect the overall change to the tax base, unless you assume that one year's sales are perfectly representative of the overall housing stock. This could explain the discrepancy between sales figures and the city assessor's figures.

In my experience, Zillow has been a random-number generator. Way too much GIGO.

When you say that number is a 6% decline on all sales, do you mean that the average price is down 6% or that 6% fewer units were sold (compared to 1 YR ago). Regarding Zillow, I have a few friends on the West Coast who sold their places a few months ago, and they got almost exactly what Zillow had predicted. I don't know if there are any objective numbers on how well it does, though...

"few friends on the West Coast who sold their places a few months ago, and they got almost exactly what Zillow had predicted."

Um. Is that because the buyers checked Zillow and adjusted their offer accordingly?

I meant the median sale price is 6% down compared to a year ago. Number of sales throuch October is down about 11%.

Zillow says it has something like a +/- 7% accuracy, which is a $56,000 spread on the median Somerville home value of $400,000. The Wall Street Journal did a quick test last year using 1,000 recent sales and found that roughly to the be case, 7.8% median difference (absolute value), even split high and low. 11% of the sales were more than 25% off. The net-net is that Zillow data is overly reliant on public data (number of bed/bath, size of plot, comp sales) and can't accommodate for things like recent renovations -- other than relying on public assessments to reflect the renovations.

when setting the tax rate - only data from the city assessors is important

as far as getting a wider snapshot of the actual real estate market and its imperfect representation to those who cannot begin to understand the complexities of it - the warren group (the standard for accurate real estate data) - is the most accurate information source available today in the boston area

zillow is one of the worst data sources i have ever seen in this business - in this market - and i have been doing this a very long time and analyze data relative to this industry on a constant basis today

the more frightening aspect of the original post of this thread is the subtle inference that actual news stories in the newspaper have ever even once been influenced by the owners of the newspaper - that's another laughable and completely arrogant misconception

the more frightening aspect of the original post of this thread is the subtle inference that actual news stories in the newspaper have ever even once been influenced by the owners of the newspaper - that's another laughable and completely arrogant misconception

Are you being sarcastic? This happens with every newspaper.

This happens with every newspaper.

Take it from the son of a journalist: it doesn't happen nearly as often as is claimed. Here's what usually happens:

1) Bob is interviewed by newspaper.

2) Journalist also interviews Clod's opponent, Rob.

3) Journalist files story reporting on the opinions of Bob and Rob, plus the key facts of the issue, which is his job.

4) Bob and Rob read the paper and are absolutely livid that that asshole journalist had the nerve to include the opinions of his opponent or anything that might otherwise contradict their position, and writes a lengthy, pissy letter about how the newspaper is totally biased and the paper is corrupt and blah blah blah.

This isn't to say there aren't infractions and conflicts of interest in any newspaper's history. Nobody's perfect. It's just you should approach any claims about biased media, especially from somebody with an agenda, with the skepticism you would approach a used car salesman who refers to himself as "Honest."

That said, it looks like nvidia is onto something here.

Bias in papers, from what I've seen and read, tends to be more subtle, structural, and fundamental. Over time, story choices are influenced by the ownership, journalists learn to write what the owners want, so those who do so get those story assignments more often, and the bias ends up being in what you don't see in the paper.

and the bias ends up being in what you don't see in the paper.

The key "bias" is any newspaper is actually the readership. You run the stories your customers want to read.

That's rather different, actually. Also, there's a very strong feedback loop between readers and the paper, influencing each other's tastes & apetites, but even though they may be in denial about it, newspapers actually have the stronger hand in the loop, and do more to push it one way or the other, even when they honestly believe they're "just responding to what readers want". Also, some forces that seem to be "reader influenced" are more fundamental, and would be present with any readership.

Nevertheless, these are not the same as what I'm referring to.

One thing I learned while researching this is how hard it can be to see the whole field of the process & effects, especially for people who are in the middle of it themselves.

One thing I learned while researching this is how hard it can be to see the whole field of the process & effects, especially for people who are in the middle of it themselves.

True to a point, but don't forget how many people think working in a newspaper is just like it is in the movies. There was a pretty interesting article on Politico back in late October about how John McCain's news coverage was so awful, I'll see if I can find it for you.

Like I said, no organization is perfect, but claims of organized, intentional bias just really irritate me, especially when they're baseless. Just like the acronym "MSM"; it's become shorthand for "people I don't believe because they don't tell me I'm right all the time."

You may be responding to something other than what you think you're responding to, then.

I certainly wasn't thinking of movies.

Ownership does create a very strong bias; I'm not sure whether "intentional" vs. "unintentional" is a meaningful or useful way to evaluate it. I suspect it's not really useful.

I don't really like the term "MSM", though "traditional media" is a fairly useful term for the same thing.

One common feature of traditional media is their subscription to the philosophy of "objectivity", which as practiced by American media generally means: for each issue, break it down into two opposing sides. Report what each side says. I actually find that to be a serious distortion in many cases, so I'm very happy to have some "not objective" media to get a better understanding from. But that one's also different from the ownership bias.

Great point, cos. I'm really tired even of NPR because of this "objectivity" BS. In some cases, one side if obviously wrong and it should be declared so. What is the point of inviting their spin people and waste everybody's time? More importantly, it distorts rationality.

When one side is obviously wrong, at least that's easy to see if you've got some knowledge, or sometimes even if not. But merely looking at things as if they can all be turned into two sides makes much bigger and weirder distortions, because most issues really have lots of different "sides", and their relationships to each other are rarely all "opposition". This kind of coverage distorts people into looking at things in terms of two sides - even if they can tell when one is obviously wrong.

wonderful conversation on this topic - i enjoyed it.

To the contrary, assuming that stories in the newspaper about an issue potentially affecting the owners' source of revenue are not biased would be laughable naivety.

I think house prices can be *very* localized. I bought my place in Central Square a few months ago for exactly the same price as my friend paid for it in June 2006, which in theory was around the top of the housing price bubble... yet my assessor assessed this place as being worth more than I paid for it. It could just be that she got a really good deal, except that a similar unit in the same 3-family sold in 2007, for a comparable price. Just think that within a couple of blocks of Central Square, housing prices have stayed stable. I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds true for Davis. For example, I think volatile gas prices tend to push housing value away from places where people commute by car, and towards T stops, so Davis/Porter might've absorbed some housing value that, say, east Somerville might've lost.

but East Somerville is also near a T stop (Sullivan)

Some of it.

Yes, house prices are highly localized. Prices for similar properties can vary quite a bit from block to block, let alone neighborhood to neighborhood within a city. There are parts of Somerville that IMO were more speculative near the 05-06 peak, like parts of Ward 2 and parts of Spring Hill. I'd imagine prices there have weakened more than the Davis vicinity, though a realtor would know better. Same is true in Central Square, where I'm guessing Area 4 will soften quicker than Riverside.

Also, regarding your assessment, note that prices have likely weakened substantially since September/October. This wouldn't affect your city assessment until next year, but might affect a lender's assessment. (Side note, I just took an assessor through my house today for a refinance.)

Cambridge mostly uses models, and rarely sends assessors over to one's house. We haven't had a city assessor since I moved into the place two and a half years ago. I think they do real assessments every three years, but perhaps they wouldn't even bother if a house was recently sold, because they could just use the purchase price.

The assessor I speak of is the one the mortgage company hired when I applied for a mortgage.

oh that would be a licensed real estate appraiser (i am one of those as well) that came to your house to appraise it for your mortgage.

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Property values in Davis Sq (and Somerville)

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Not sure I understand.

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thanks laryu

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media bias

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