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

[laryu.livejournal.com]

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.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

huh. when i was tracking real estate prices more closely, a year and a half ago or so, zillow was crack-smokingly optimistic in its estimates. maybe they've gotten more accurate.

wow what a misinformed person

[jamesnorton.livejournal.com]

zillow is notoriously flawed in its data, i was absolutely correct in making that statement over at the somerville news website...

the somerville news wasnt created by the owners of era - it was created in 1969 - and not for nothing, but if property sales prices came down, that would eventually translate into more sales, actually, so it doesnt makes a lot of sense saying the real estate people wouldnt want to advertise lower prices

the somerville news best of series was around long before era was associated with the newspaper - check it out, its easy to find out the right information on that

wow it amazes me that people can be that misinformed, and then make snide commentary based on said misinformation...why dont you take the time to actually find out what you are making snide comments about before you make them? is it really that hard? do you really hate people for no particular reason? at least i have a valid reason when i say i cant stand snotty, arrogant asshats that don't have a clue.

[cold-type.livejournal.com]

Two things re: assessment values.

1) The new assessment is based on values as of Jan. 1, 2008, compared to Jan. 1, 2007. So the 2 percent change supposedly represents the change in property values during 2007 -- not this year. (The assessments are always a year behind.)

2) Are assessments more reliable than zillow? I don't really know. But when I look at home sales, I've noticed the numbers often differ substantially from assessments. Has anyone else noticed that? If you bought or sold a home in the past few years, was the assessment on the mark?

[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.

[ron_newman]

Also, from yesterday's Globe article:

"Assessments, calculated largely off the previous calendar year's sales, lag the market. As a result, the average assessed value for homes is likely to dip again this year - as it has for many of the communities whose figures have recently been certified - and could do so next year as well."

[ritcey.livejournal.com]

The coupon reads it was "voted" #1, scare quotes included. Apparently, there wasn't an actual vote, so no problem there ;-)

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/2008/11/there-was-no-vote.html

Zillow

[laryu.livejournal.com]

fwiw, zillow reports its Somerville "Zindex" is -2.9% year-over-year for the 3rd quarter of 2008.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

In general, newspapers that run a "Best of" contest or poll usually take any businesses owned by the newspaper's controlling partners out of the running to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

I'd recommend that the Somerville News think about following that model in future.