I’ve just read a funny article at NYTimes.com written by a self-confessed “information addict” and her quest to discern—several times a day, apparently—the value of her home and thus her potential wealth (or lack thereof) at any given moment in time using a myriad of internet resources. (I know that sentence is cumbersome, but so are the activities of our information-seeking heroine!)
At one point she likens the activity to party tricks, “… by announcing to our friends all kinds of delicious snippets that once were considered intimate, known mainly to brokers or people with enough time to drive to the courthouse to flip through musty files.”
IMHO, I’d have to agree with the party tricks bit, but I’d have to disagree with the notion that this information was “known” to brokers.
Certainly property value information has long been available to brokers, but that doesn’t mean they were either aware of it or using it on a daily basis. I don’t know how many times in my 18 year career I have seen a house listing that was beyond the scope of reasonable or how many times I’ve had to explain to a broker that the house didn’t appraise only to be met with a blank stare (on the other end of the telephone).
While this information has been more readily accessible to real estate and mortgage professionals, that doesn’t mean we all walked around accessing the info; certainly not to the degree the NYTimes.com correspondent does for her own home using the ‘net.
As for the “party tricks,” yah, that’s about the best way to categorize such an activity. I mean, what else can you possibly hope to do with this information? How does this help you unless you are about to make a serious decision about whether to sell your home or buy one?
I don’t even think it helps you in determining whether or not to refinance. As the correspondent points out, “After looking at the most recent comparable sales, Mr. Raful said my house was worth $100,000 more than the highest online estimate.” Mr. Raful is the appraiser who appraised her house when last she refinanced.
Read the article and have a good chuckle. And keep your “slightly-cynical” hat firmly positioned on your head as you read: this “readily available” information isn’t useful to most folks on most (if not ALL) days of the week, most of the time, most every year. Like a lot of stuff on the internet, there’s accurate and then there’s just plain silly.
My favorite quote from the article is by a Professor Shiv, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford University: “The Internet makes it easy to get too much information, from too many conflicting sources, and all it’s going to do is to give you ecstasy on some days and pain on others.”
Here, here.
Anyone have any better party tricks?