[Note from the editor: Below is a sample special business intelligence report, originally published for members of the GEM. Another example of our work is the property management software category product review series for small landlords. — Drew Meyers] The Rise of Automated Property Valuations BY ADAM…

HouseCanary raised a series B. $31 million. (via TechCrunch & Inman). From TechCrunch: HouseCanary’s business revolves around selling software to appraisers and real estate investment firms. I’ve never understood their strategy, or differentiator for that matter. I have to admit — I still don’t understand the…

Onboard Informatics has been working on a new AVM brand that was announced today — myAVM. My question is the same one I have about RealEstate.com — do millennials really need their own AVM? I get that brokerages and agent want to integrate a white label…

I’m on record as being a skeptic on HouseCanary. I thought I’d share a video of a presentation by their CEO, Jeremy Sicklick (via VendorAlley): After watching the video — I’m still a skeptic. It seems home price indexes at the block level is their…

I saw this morning that HouseCanary raised a $33 million Series A. There have been a number of AVM attempts over the past decade. When I look at HouseCanary’s home page, they are much more CoreLogic, Onboard Informatics, or Home Junction than they are Zillow. Which surprised…

I’ve written about AVM’s before, here. Another one looks to have recently entered the market. Buyerprice.com. Aside from their chrome extension (which seems cool, but not defensible), I’m not sure what’s different about what they’re doing. I assume the algorithm is based on MLS data? How…

My company, Virgent Realty, sold a home in Atlanta’s hot Grant Park neighborhood just under three months ago for $492,500. The home had numerous showings its first weekend, and went under contract 5 days after we put it on the market. This morning, I was…

I am a firm believer that someone will create a great AVM that will rapidly replace human input into the valuation process. As we’ve seen with advances like self-driving cars, computers are better at assessing risks, reacting to local conditions, and, in many cases, making…

To build a real estate portal, the standard strategy is collect lots of listing data. Or you could try the “AVM abroad” strategy (Zillow for country X). I’ve written about data sources before (MLS listing data, public property data, and other free datasets). Unfortunately, virtually no country in the world has the required…

Someone landed on Geek Estate the other day, with the following search query: the truth about real estate automated valuation websites I’m not sure exactly what they are looking for, but they should know AVM’s (automated valuation model) have been around for years & used…