Indeed, HomeGain pioneered this type of product back in 1999!

What Zillow is doing is not new or innovative.

HomeGain will be updating its relaunched HomeValuation tool again later this week

HomeGain does not claim that its tool is accurate and makes no zillow type claims that HomeGain is the “Kelly’s blue book of Homevaluations”

Check out HomeGain’s Homevaluation tool at http://www.homegain.com

For a blog thread explaining the differences between HomeGain and Zillow see -”Why HomeGain Beats Zillow” at
http://www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com/why-homegain-beats-zillow

Absolutely I can do it “as I did before” without modification. I ran the stats and tried to modify them per your subsequent request, but couldn’t do that. But I absolutely can do it exactly as I did before and will right now. Will take awhile to make the pie charts. It will be a mirror image of the original post, but updated timeframe.

But if they can tighten the scope and only use Lake View against Lake View and no view against no view, that would be a welcome improvement. We have a lot of water views in Seattle. Lake Washington, Lake Sammamish, Sound Views, Lake Union, Elliot Bay views. Most are noted in public tax records and even have qualifiers for “average” vs. “good” etc…

In any event, we appreciate your continued tweaking and the fact that some people are using Zestimate as offer price is really not your fault. Of course none of it is “David G.’s fault”.

I’ve been trying to get updates on what’s happening in AZ, but the news seems sketchy at best. Any changes there?

To your point about picking better comps; absolutely, we’re also working on that and you can expect an upgrade to comps on Zillow later this year.

Thanks again for the feedback.

David

Getting it right would have been a LOT better than “taking it out”.

I think there’s a spot for you on our test team.

You’re right – once there’s a house on a lot, the $/lot sq. ft. is not very useful information. We only include it in the comps list but even that I battle to explain — so, we’ll be taking it out in a product release later this year.

Thanks for the feedback. Please keep it coming.

We are just not on the same page. The article is about how a consumer should check the value of a house they are buying, in order to determine an offer price. As to the value of the lot improving and not the value of the house itself, I’m just reporting what actually happened at the house I chose in the example, and it says lot up house not up.

I agree that builders deal in averages, which makes it all the more important for consumers to use different valuation methods than the builder/developer, particularly when buying a house. The builder evenly distributed the positives and negatives of all lots and houses based on overall profit. It is then incumbent upon the purchaser of each house to value differently than the builder, as the best house (or condo) in the develpment gets “the deal” when the builder averages the negatives, and the worst one gets hurt on resale.

I remember a condo project with almost no spreads in price for worst location in the building vs best. No difference to “the spec developer” as he was using average and overall profit margins. But on resale the best location seller made a bundle and the worst one can’t sell for what they paid.

It seems to me that the market for vacant lots or tear downs is driven mostly by spec builders. In areas like Kirkland, or unincorporated rural zoned Woodinville/Redmond (e.g.,Union Hill), it seems like they are all building a 3800sf to 5000sf craftsman house that sells for something like $1.5 million. Given construction costs, that means they can pay some number ($500,000?) for the lot and have the house project pencil. Therefore, the Kirkland lot and the rural lot are in competition with each other fairly head to head as a spec builder site. A home buyer looking in that price range would probably check out both areas.

Obviously the sites are very different, would appeal to different buyers, and would affect the architecture and size somewhat. But you are in both cases looking a reasonably similar new spec home selling around $1.5 million with similar cost structure.

That said, would the house in a rural setting outside Redmond appreciate less than the house in Kirkland? It could be, but I dont think the test for appreciation is per square foot land cost. The average lot size in Houghton is bigger than west of market, so does that mean Houghton will appreciate slower? Again, that may be, but it would be for reasons other than lot cost per sf.