From there, relationships can be nurtured to, hopefully, lead to a sale. But first and foremost, you need that instruction!
With the risk of upsetting a few people, I would even argue that it is human nature to overvalue. In one sense, it’s innate, found deep down inside us, that wanting to be optimistic, confident in our abilities as an agent.
On a more self-interested level, it’s easy to understand why some agents will overvalue in order to secure the instruction, especially in the most competitive markets.
This understanding, however, does not negate from the fact that the practice itself is morally ambiguous. The agent’s job is to best serve their client; not sway the client into giving them the instruction based on falsities.
I appreciate that there is no assigned value to property, who’s to say what a house could sell for? So the agent is not doing anything wrong, per se, but they’re not giving the seller a realistic picture of the market.
This begs the question: if overvaluing is a common, long-standing trait of the industry, do we need to find a different way of doing it?
Moreover, do we even need humans involved in the valuation process? One solution might be auto-valuation...
Auto-valuation and the missing 3%
This article, also published yesterday, tells of Urbanzoom, a PropTech startup from Singapore, and its auto-valuation tool which boasts, it claims, ‘a median error of less than 3%’.
That’s a pretty impressive claim and one which, if true, proves there is real potential in auto-valuation innovation. But I still have a few hang-ups about it...
Firstly, the race to build and offer auto-valuation models (AVMs) can only have one winner: the company which creates the most accurate algorithm and delivers the most accurate valuations. Nobody is going to want to go with the company that offers the second most accurate valuations, so there will be no competition.
And then there’s the fact that the route to becoming the industry-dominant AVM is incredibly risky. Zillow, for example, has enjoyed great success with its evolving auto-valuation model, producing some very pleasing results. It has, however, also been sued on multiple occasions for assigning incorrect values.
That’s why it’s important to ask, when Urbanzoom claims to be accurate to 3%, 3% of what, exactly? There is no single truth when it comes to a property price, so what figure is it claiming to be 3% away from?
I can only assume it’s comparing it to the value that a human assigned to the same house.
Bad data = no data
Even if Urbanzoom is as accurate as it claims, one still has to wonder what the breaking point of that accuracy is, and how much responsibility auto-valuation can actually handle.
Take, for example, a series of London streets made up of terrace-upon-terrace of identical Victorian conversions. I can believe that algorithms would have an easy time valuing those houses.
Back in the day, I knew the value of some houses before even visiting them. I knew the street, I knew the layout, I knew it was a two-bed. This is all stuff that auto-valuation can easily learn. But what happens when you’re dealing with more unusual properties? Church conversions, farms, homes with unique architecture, etc. How can an algorithm possibly know the value of a truly one-off property?
It all depends on the data. Bad data in equals bad data out and vice versa. It’s simple. For a valuation, bad data is basically no data. Without data, algorithms are useless. And the data has to be coming in indefinitely, tracking market trends and constantly readjusting to suit.
Generating this data and putting it to use is a long, long process. Along the way, auto-valuation is going to get it wrong far too often.
The lesser of two evils?
We are left with one final question: which is the lesser evil? Relying on humans who are naturally inclined to overvalue, or relying on AVMs which inevitably get it wrong sometimes?
Neither is a good option, so something’s got to change. For humans, that requires us to collectively decide to assign more realistic values to homes, regardless of how that affects our chance of winning instructions.
For auto-valuation, it means being patient and harvesting more and more data, increasingly comprehensive data, until the algorithm has enough to be truly reliable.
So, I guess that means there’s actually a more vital final question: the human or the algorithm, which is most likely to change?
*James Dearsley is a leading PropTech influencer and commentator. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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I suspect that "Heather" from Agent Software has never come out from behind her computer screen, because if she had, and before slinging mud, she would realize that valuing property is not as simple as collecting fixed data from a machine. How many times, over the years, have agents agreed to list a property at a certain price before the vendor rings and puts the price up to a simply unattainable figure, simply because "the family said", or "a friend who knows about property knows the market well"? I do freely admit that there are agents that overprice, but please don't broad-brush the entire industry. The majority of agents are hardworking, sensible people, doing their best for clients.....only a small proportion are roguish overvaluers. To do so is like suggesting that Spectre is simply a letter writing organisation that could be performed by somebody at Miss Moneypenny for one-tenth of the cost.
And James Dearsleys comments about being morally ambiguous seems to imply that agents are solely responsible for over pricing. I'm sorry but it just isn't correct. There are thousands of influences that create a percieved value, some more important to a vendor, and some more important to a buyer; none of this can be accounted for by a machine.
Perhaps the proptech industry ought to look at inventing solutions for problems that actually exist, instead of swamping the market with all sorts of "solutions" for things that it believes the industry should have but can live without.
If you really want to do something useful, invent a system that gets round the need for the legal profession, to cut down the time between the agents creating the sale and the client moving. Agents are more than happy to agree a sale, organise completion dates and finances, but when it gets into the hands of lawyers the whole process almost grids to a halt......theres a challenge!
The value of a property is surely what someone is prepared to pay for it? therefore these automated valuations can never be accurate. over the years I have had many properties that have sold at above what would be considered 'market level' because a buyer has been found who really wants that property for whatever reason and is willing and able to pay the price to secure it. we have seen a see saw on mortgage valuations between surveyors valuing up and the max price for a given street/house increasing, then a few years later down valuing. The agent gives a market appraisal based (hopefully) on size, location, condition and comparable evidence along with the key factor, demand, the property is marketed and if a proceed able offer is achieved at the asking price (or near enough) then surely the property is 'worth' that asking price?
Also, although some over valuing to secure listings does take, the vendor has to shoulder some of the responsibility, in the majority of cases and especially with the information on sold prices and asking prices in the area that is available to home owners, those home owners know full well what the rough price of their property is likely to be. This coupled with three or more valuations from agents should give them enough information to make an informed decision about their asking price, if they wish to instruct and agent who will market for far above the average then so be it.
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