A large part of our data research for our sellers is arriving at a suggested price we believe we can sell a Portsmouth NH or New Hampshire Seacoast home for.
Not a week goes by that we don’t hear from a buyer or seller insisting that a property is worth a different amount than the bank appraised it for. We get it: everyone wants to gain the most value from their transaction… so why do the home valuation sites tend to get it so wrong?
Here’s why: they don’t see the whole picture.
It’s the real estate equivalent of looking at an iceberg from the surface.
AVMs are only the tip of the iceberg
To truly understand the value of a Portsmouth NH home requires more than just knowing the number of bedrooms, baths and square footage. To get the full picture, you need the advice of a real estate professional.
Essentially, if you think accuracy is important, you need to know the difference between an AVM and a BPO:
AVM stands for Automated Valuation Method. Essentially, it’s software that reaches out for publicly available data and then uses that data to offer a suggested value. This is what Zillow’s popular Zestimate is– a quick result produced by software that can’t see the whole picture.
BPO stands for Broker Price Opinion, and it’s a much more manual process. Here, the real estate professional who knows, works and likely lives in the area, uses their actual brain to improve upon the data provided by an AVM. A BPO allows us to take into consideration what we know to be true about intangible values like good design and tasteful upgrades– stuff that requires human understanding in order to derive a meaningful conclusion.
We also take into consideration current, local market conditions like an area’s Absorption rate, current interest rates, current inventory of comparable homes for sale, pending sales, and many other factors about New Hampshire Seacoast real estate that a robot cannot do.
The bottom line is that AVM’s are fine until you’re serious about buying or selling. Then, it’s time to call your local real estate professional (yep, I’m talking about us). Do you know anyone that would like to know what their home is actually worth? We can help.
Check us out in the “About us” section of our website. We have listed our real estate resumes, awards, certifications, designations, and lots of testimonials from satisfied buyers and sellers.
And remember, an AVM is not the same as the opinion and advice of experienced, Portsmouth NH real estate professionals.
Ann Cummings and Jim Lee, New Hampshire Seacoast and southern Maine real estate specialists.
603-436-1221
