People say there will always be a need for a realtor, but consumers may adapt to new methods:
JG: How is Zillow addressing these different aspects of the consumer journey?
ES: The problem that we are spending a bunch of time on right now is how do you fix the home-touring problem. We’ve noticed that a lot of times we had a consumer who wanted to go see a home, and couldn’t get in. We went and talked to ShowingTime and they told us that there were 92 million showing requests on our platform last year, but only 68 million of those got fulfilled.
This is a boring problem, and what we are doing is attacking it in three different ways.
The first is a new technology that we call “3D Home” and it’s sort of like your next-generation, virtual tour that allows you to walk through the house. What we found is that homes that have these 3D Home tours are viewed 45% more than homes that don’t have them and on average they sold 14% faster.
Then, we’re putting a bunch of technology, resources and engineering into ShowingTime so that when that buy side request comes in to see a home in person, we can make sure that the agents can connect and we can get that person into the house. We also just launched a beta test of a product where you can actually use the Zillow app as a mobile control to get into the house.
So with these three different projects that we have going on right now, we are going to try to fix this boring but incredibly impactful problem of getting into a house.
JG: What other innovation can we expect that will help drive the next generation of Zillow and its business model?
ES: There are a bunch of things that we are doing to simply help consumers buy homes. We have a really sophisticated artificial intelligence engine that sits behind our user search interface.
We’re doing essentially the same thing for listings that Netflix does when it sends users a “here is a show that you’re probably going to like” suggestion. On the second time you come back to the app or site, we’ve looked at not only what you’ve been searching, but also what people similar to you are searching, and our goal is that on that first page of search results to get you a house we think you’re going to like.
The goal is you should never have to go to page two to get a home that you like.
Another thing is we just launched a feature that we call SharePlay, and what it does is set up a FaceTime call and you and another person can use the app at the same time. In our research we found that 86% of our users on Zillow said they were shopping with someone else—either a spouse, housemate or parent.
I was just saying the other day that we’re due for a sale that closes $1,000,000 over the list price……but I’m not going to count this one.
The seller had been telling agents that he wanted $4,000,000, and it went on the Compass internal site at $3,260,000 for a few days before the MLS. Darin sold it and he lives in the ER so he probably knew that the seller’s intentions were to get into the 3’s. The list-it-low strategy worked though!
It does continue a strong run of closed sales in the $3,000,000s over the last year – with my November sale still the all-time leader:
San Francisco is no longer the nation’s least affordable metro area, being surpassed by San Diego, it’s neighborhood to the south. The latest OJO Labs unaffordability report saw San Diego bypass both San Francisco and Los Angeles to become the nation’s least affordable metro by comparing median home price to local incomes.
The median home sold price in San Diego climbed 14.3% in January to $764,000, bringing the city’s unaffordability score — a ratio of home sold price to median household income — to 8.1.
And despite San Francisco still boasting the most expensive housing stock of any metro in the U.S., a 4.2% home sold price decrease in January on an annual basis actually drove San Francisco’s unaffordability score below 8 for the first time since OJO Labs began tracking the data in July 2021. In January, San Francisco’s unaffordability score fell to 7.9, down from 9.2 last month.
Los Angeles; Mobile, Alabama; Pensacola, Florida; and Boise, Idaho metro areas rounded out the top five least affordable metro areas in the U.S.
Unaffordability score is a ratio that’s derived from monthly median housing prices and median household income. The higher the score, the more unaffordable a metro area is for a household making the median income. Median home price data is drawn from local multiple listing service sold data and median household income is derived from 2016-19 census data.
Another follow-up on those five listings that went live on the market in the same week.
A third one (on Jensen Court) went pending this week!
It was the best value of the three homes for sale, so no big surprise.
It’s what we can expect in other areas at other price points though. If there is a surge of listings at the same time, the demand is probably strong enough to pick them all up, or at least cause them to sell in the order of the best value available.
It will be when none of them sell that a red flag is raised.
We see on every listing how the estimated values jump all over the place.
On my Aviara listing, the initial estimate was $2,247,615, but once the home hit the open market, the red team lowered their estimate by $313,637 to $1,933,978. A few days later, they have INCREASED it by $205,143 to $2,139,121…….which are some wild swings in less than a week!
It appears that the automated valuations can be wrong by 10% to 20%, and the guys behind the curtain are manipulating them as needed. A scary thought if people are relying on them.
Do people rely on them?
There are probably buyers who are believers, and use them to decide how much to pay for a home.
But it’s even worse for sellers. It’s been happening more and more that home sellers are putting more faith in their zestimate and Redfin estimate. If those estimates are higher than what their agent tells them, of course they want to list for a higher price and they wave around their computerized values as proof.
In today’s frenzy it may not seem to matter much, but there will come a day when accurate valuations will become more necessary.
Or will it?
Rob talks about the changes being made to the GSE’s underwriting guidelines below.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are issuing more appraisal waivers based on automated property valuations! Usually it’s because the down payment is sufficient enough that they aren’t that worried about a default. But once the guidelines are changed, won’t it just be a matter of time before appraisals as we knew them become extinct?
Maybe that global warming thing is just on the east coast? Hat tip to cbmark for sending this in!
An oceanfront vacation home in the Outer Banks area made famous by the movie Nights in Rodanthe completely collapsed into the sea, most likely due to erosion, causing debris to wash up along the North Carolina shoreline on Wednesday morning.
Officials from the National Parks Service of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore warned visitors to ‘use caution when participating in recreational activities on the beach and in the ocean between the villages of Rodanthe and Salvo due to debris from a collapsed house.’
A press release sent out by the local National Parks Service noted that smaller amounts of debris were found more than seven miles away. Dare County is working with the agency to clear the crumbled house and remove the debris from the ocean.
The cozy beach town in the Outer Banks became a popular destination after the 2008 premiere of the Nicholas Sparks movie Nights in Rodanthe that starred Richard Gere and Diane Lane, which was set in the coastal town.
For those who are at least 55 years old and are buying a home in San Diego County in which you will reside, you can bring your previous property-tax basis with you!
Written by Richard Hopen from COMPASS Short Hills NJ:
When my wife and I sold our house in 2017, our $239,000 mortgage payoff was stolen.
The money was never recovered. We were victims of real estate wire fraud.
I’m not only a victim, I’m also a real estate agent and lawyer. And shame on me for not knowing about wire fraud when I sold my house. Real estate wire fraud is perpetrated by cyber criminals who exploit the trust between home buyers and sellers and their real estate agents, title companies, lawyers, and mortgage lenders. Criminals steal home deposits, down payments, and mortgage payoffs by accessing and monitoring email accounts of the parties in a transaction.
When a criminal finds an email with attached wiring instructions, they change the depository account number and email the fraudulent wiring instructions to the person who will wire the funds. If the target is duped, the money will be wired into the criminal’s account. Accessing email accounts is easy for cyber-criminals and opportunities to commit the crime are unlimited. According to a 2021 ALTA survey, 1 in 3 real estate transactions are targeted.
Real estate transactions are ripe conditions for thieves. Each transaction involves multiple parties, working under pressure to meet the closing deadline. Many of the parties share information over unsecured email accounts that can lead a savvy criminal to the wiring instructions. Home buyers and sellers are vulnerable, and real estate agents need to do much more than include wire fraud warnings on emails or have customers sign wire fraud disclosures. At a minimum, every seller and buyer should know about the risk of real estate wire fraud and how to prevent it.
Rich Hopen of COMPASS Short Hills, NJ has worked closely with ALTA to create www.stopwirefraud.org. He has sat on a wire fraud panel with a U.S. Senator; participated in a roundtable discussion with the FBI, ALTA, the Mortgage Bankers Association, American Bankers Association, and NAR; was interviewed and quoted by HousingWire and the Wall Street Journal; and has spoken to many real estate offices and organizations.
Another thought: Avoid Friday closings to help stop wire fraud.
Friday is the most highly targeted day of the week for wire fraud at real estate closings, because the next business day is on Monday, and there is only a 24 hour window to identify a fraudulent transfer and reverse it, and criminals know and exploit this weakness.
Always tell your clients to follow up with their bank in the hours after closing to be sure wire transfers were done but to also check very first thing the next morning. If the next morning is Saturday, there is no live person at the bank to follow up on the wire, and by Monday, the window to reverse it is past.
Check out our new listing of this 2br/2ba home in Park Royal! It’s the premium penthouse unit in the complex, located in the very back and has the wrap-around balcony for max viewing of the surrounding area. Newer kitchen, newer bathrooms, hardwood floors, efficient mini-splits, and plenty of natural light. Want move-in ready? This is it – just bring your toothbrush! Two pets allowed too! Balboa Park is a treasure – live right next to it! Morley Field is a block away, which has cycling, dog park, swimming, tennis, golf (27 holes) archery, softball, frisbee golf….everything you need to enjoy the outdoors! Only $695,000.
