A large part of our data research for our sellers is arriving at a suggested price we believe we can sell a home for in the Burlington, Vermont area.  

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.

Don't rely on the tip of the icebert

AVMs are only the tip of the iceberg- (insert disastrous Titanic analogy here.....)

To truly understand the value of a Burlington, Vermont area home requires more than just knowing the number of bedrooms, baths and square footage. To get the full picture, you need the advice of an experienced 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 thoughtful and market-informed process. Here, a real estate professional who knows, works, and  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. You can trust an algorithm, or you can have over twenty years of experience in your corner, working in your best interest.

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 Burlington 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 the MHG!). Do you know anyone that would like to know what their home is actually worth? We can help.

The MHG not only offers Risk Free Listings, but also our own home valuation system to get you started in the process. Using your information, we complete a Comparative Market Analysis to give you the most up to date and thorough BPO possible. Better yet- once we have given your home our careful attention-we sit down face-to-face and walk you through how we came to our value. Lets see an online site do that. You are not a robot, so why trust your home value to one?  

Shouldn't you Expect More? Call or message today to see the difference a family group of professionals can make for you!  

 

www.MattHurlburtGroup.com  Expect More.