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

[ron_newman]

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

[cos]

Some of it.

[laryu.livejournal.com]

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.)

[cos]

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.

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

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.