Blogsberger's Box

My headline comes from John Burns Consulting, a national firm providing custom consulting services to homebuilders and others.

The current link to his full commentary is here.

He makes points I've noted before, and include in my appraisals every time I reference Zillow data, and less frequently when I've used the Case Shiller data:

1. Zillow and other AVM (automated valuation models) are not able to factor in important attributes (e.g. condition, what's across the street) of a specific property, so unless your home is "average" in every key aspect, be careful.  But, Zillow and the AVMs provide excellent statistics for the important things that are 'average' in a neighborhood:

  a.  price movements from period to period in a neighborhood -i.e.  is the market 'going up', 'going down', or 'stable'.

  b.  how does one neighborhood (or zip code, or city) compare to another in average prices of homes.

2. Case Shiller and other sequential sales models are driven by 'what's currently selling' - not a representative sample of the entire market.

If you received your 2010-2011 Notification of Assessed Value in Santa Clara County, and are uncertain if your property is overvalued, please contact me for a consultation before the September 15th deadline!

A recent ZipRealty survey published on Inman:

  http://www.inman.com/news/2010/06/15/top-10-sought-after-home-features

And it made me wonder about the trade-offs one sees folks making here locally in mid and low end homes - converting their garages into storage space, or living space, and moving their cars to the streets or driveways.

I guess its just the result of the relatively high cost of living (an of storing stuff) here in the Silicon Valley.

Here's the latest updates to my analysis of the local market area (Milpitas - 95035, Berryessa - 95132 and 95131).

The chart below is a combination of all 3 zip codes, showing a strong improvement over the last 12 months in Sold price (the green bars) as compared to For Sale (asking, the red bars) price, although down about 10% from prices 24 months ago:

The charts for the individual zip codes are linked on my home page - click and see!  The trend is similar for all 3 zip codes, with 95132 looking the most consistently strong of the three.

Local Market Expertise, Innovative Solutions:

Boxberger Appraisals is part of a new and innovative appraisal service being launched nationwide. Our objective is to partner with appraisal firms nationwide to create a local, regional, and national database of residential properties which are being researched, verified, and analyzed monthly against current market data and market trends. Over two hundred other appraisal firms have joined with us in this new venture.

The analysis is being done on all properties within our local market, and simultaneously in the other 200 plus firms across the country. It has been a major undertaking, in both capital and time to create and maintain the data; millions of dollars of capital, hundreds of thousands of hours of labor. By mid 2010 the database will have been completed and all software will be functioning. We are proud of our association with the venture, and the investment we are making to improve the service we can provide to our community and to our lending and other other local clients.

Zone Data Systems, LLC (ZDS) has been formed to manage and market the software, data, and resulting appraisal products on a national basis. The ZDS concept and technology were originated by Zaio in Canada. Our firm is now a partner in ZDS in the US and will market and deliver the services locally to our community and clients. Please visit www.zonedatasystems.com Geoscoring website to obtain more information on these exciting new products and services!

We are working to more effectively serve our community and clients with innovative, rapid, cost effective valuation solutions!

One Step Ahead!

I found a well done site with tools and data for those interested in San Jose real estate:  http://www.neighborcity.com/CA/San-Jose/

I'm completing the biannual Appraisal Institute "Business Practices & Ethics" course.  One of the introductory sections covers mission statements.

Here's my cut at Boxberger Appraisals' - let me know what you think.

Mission Statement:

Here's the latest stats from our MLS for zip code 95132 - showing median prices (stabilizing the past couple months) and total sold (stable year-over-year since last year):

It's only been a few weeks since my observation that prices appeared to be stabilizing in some markets.

Today's San Jose and San Francisco papers trumpet the same news:

San Jose Mercury News - front page headline "Home sales firming up" - they quote Matthew Anderson of Foresight Analytics.

San Francisco Chronicle - bottom of the front page, headline "Median home prices inch higher" - they quote MDA DataQuick.

Stay tuned - if there's no more macroeconomic shocks to the system, we could be at the bottom of the cycle on single family home prices.

Commercial Real Estate is another story - I don't expect good news or price stability until 2010 as the shorter term loans on those properties reset in the coming months.