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

Re: wow what a misinformed person

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

exactly, ron - thank you.

Re: wow what a misinformed person

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

OK, I suppose ERA did not found the Somerville News. But that does not detract from the substance of my points: 1. That ERA has a financial interest in the Somerville News NOW, and 2. That when the Somerville News makes a statement about real estate in Somerville, a major conflict of interest is unavoidable (whether you like it or not).
Look, James, I don't even know you, how could I hate you? I just hate conflicts of interest and the BS people use to deny there is such conflict. That's one reason why we are in the current generalized mess.

nvidia

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

hey there - believe me, i see your point. i guess i get offended quickly because the two companies aren't directly tied into each other the way you think they are - and they're both corporations with different shareholders (only one person has shares in both, and he doesn't derive any financial gain by the newspaper. it's a long story, but what i am getting at is simply that never ever has the publisher or anyone else directed how a news story is reported, so there is no conflict of interest...
it's the same with me being the managing editor of the newspaper and an elected member of the school committee - other than there being a lot more coverage than there used to be in our newspaper for school district events and information, there is very little left over to blur the lines or create the illusion of a conflict of interest...
maybe it seems more cut and dry for me, sitting where i sit - than someone like yourself, who is free to formulate your own opinion based on perception - in which case, we are probably both right in our own respects.
i apologize for being reactionary very early this morning. thanks for being a reasonable person.

Re: nvidia

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

Thanks, no biggie at all :) Mostly, I wanted to know how things really are around here, in terms of real estate values. Not that I plan to sell anytime soon (but if I do I'll give ERA a call! ).

Re: nvidia

[ron_newman]

Give surrealestate a call too. She's quite friendly.

Re: nvidia

[nvidia99999.livejournal.com]

OK. Thanks for the tip. But I won't leave Somerville anytime soon :)