Property values in Davis Sq (and Somerville)

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

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? :)

Comments

[narya.livejournal.com]

With respect to Zillow, I've found its prices for Somerville to be unreliable for a couple of reasons:

1) It isn't really very good about factoring in proximity to public transportation. Being a five minute walk from the red line vs a 25 minute walk is a big difference for buyers, but looking at Zillow's comparables it doesn't seem to account for them very well.

2) It doesn't account very well for the level of supply in the market - typically there are a lot more condos available around here than single family homes, which is a little bit unusual.

3) People can edit the features of their property in Zillow and I did notice people adding questionable features the last time I was looking for property. I saw things like listing both a dining room and an extra bedroom that were really the same room, including A/C when they had window units rather than central air, etc.

If what you're looking at is the median price, I don't think it's going to tell you a lot. As the market slowed down, fewer new renovations and such will be available on the market, so the median price may move down much more than the price on any "average" unit moves down.

The article is talking about the assessed values, which will tend to change somewhat less than the market values. The statement that the assessed values declined by 2% is a statement of fact, quoted from the assessors, and you could presumably verify it by calling the assessor's office and asking them for yourself. But it's important to keep in mind that the assessed price is not necessarily the market price. Any particular property can potentially sell for significantly more or less than its assessed value.

zillow manillow

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

good points narya -

when i was pissy at 315am this morning about the remarks thrown my way, it wasn't in me to list out some of the issues with zillow - but you did a fabulous job! it isn't just somerville that zillow is horribly flawed, but pretty much the entire area - more flawed as you go closer to the downtown area of boston and less as you travel outwards in a concentric fashion.

i have found only one example where tax assessments have gone along hand in hand with the marketplace - and that would be commercial property assessments in cambridge, especially on larger residential-based properties (5 or more units) and industrial complexes (small to medium/large).

also of note, the MLS-Pin system most realtors use is flawed as well - for a long list of reasons not worth getting into, but predominately because of the realtors themselves (sloppy/incorrect data entry, no independent verification, etc.). the real estate market, overall, is a difficult thing to really understand - we are lucky in somerville for the most part, because things aren't as bad here as they are in say, Stoneham or Lynn or Brockton or even Waltham/Watertown - and there are a whole host of reasons for that as well...
ad valorem taxation is a funny little beast - assessments go up, the mill rate goes down and vice-versa - it's a political shell game so that the typical homeowner doesn't groan too much that their taxes are almost always going up...which from a governmental perspective is vital to meet the requirements of the community as far as essential services.

ok too many subjects, requiring way too much information to be of use here...