Wisest of the crowds

Ardell DellaLoggia of the Rain City Guide pens one the best pieces I have seen regarding housing valuations at a hyper-local level. Entitled Home Valuation “Tools”, Ardell goes on to detail how to properly value a property and how to seperate the value of the land versus the value of the house…an important consideration, often overlooked, in expensive markets where most of the value is actually land (I am talking to you San Francisco!).  Her analysis is deep so get a pencil out but the basic takeaway is that if you can determine the cost of land, and make adjustments for slight differences, you should be able to determine which houses are overpriced and which ones are underpriced.  Ardell finds a home that was torn down after being purchased and so was able to get a solid market value for land. Getting everything apples to apples is critical - and not easy.
Her analysis is not only thorough, but also demonstrates that housing valuation is a highly complex problem that has variation from property to property. In other words, it is very difficult to model and so AVM’s will largely miss the nuances. Naturally we at My-Currency have built our site for this very reason - to enable the local experts to shine and to collect these nuances both in detail and as an aggregated value in our prediction technology we call CrowdValue.

Joel Burslem continues to demonstrate his deep knowledge of tech by discussing how the real estate industry can leverage social networking sites like Facebook to broaden their network of clients and market their listings. In an article entitled Marketing Real Estate on Facebook, Burslem outlines five basic ways an agent can use social networks. Naturally, we agree with Joel. My-Currency is a vertical social network, a term I first read many moons ago at the blog Social Degree. The difference between My-Currency and Facebook is the difference between Walmart and Whole Foods. Walmart has everything but Whole Foods has only the best.

My-Currency is trying to be more relevant to users by focusing on, and aggregating, content specific to housing consumers. We give you all the tools you need to get inside housing problems. For a professional, it should prove a resource that demonstrates to your current clients authority while hooking and incubating future clients. For consumers, its an opportunity to share information and get professional advice - free. The site has all the basic building blocks in place. The open question is whether a vertical network will better serve consumers and professionals than a horizontal network. We obviously think so. That is not to say Facebook and their like are not of value. They are - use them! In fact, we will look to integrate with them and other parts of the internet ecosystem. Its just that we think focus, focus, focus will create better relevancy and better engagement with those interested in housing.

So when you want to purchase Tide Detergent go to Walmart. When you need a 25 year old bottle of Academia Barilla Balsamic Vinegar from Modena, Italy, go to Whole Foods. Do you, as an agent, want to be lost in aisles of Walmart like poorly selling lines of Tide detergent?

See the video at YouTube here