San Francisco real estate insight, statistics, gossip, and news with a twist and some flavor – theFrontSteps

San Francisco Real Estate Market Values In A Fun Interactive Graph (Courtesy Of Zillow)

So we’ve heard from Realtor Economists, we’ve heard from our Association of Realtors, and looky there! Now we get to hear what Zillow thinks the real estate market is doing! Fantastic!

Have a look at San Francisco Home Values:

–

Now have a look at San Francisco Median Sales Price (Holy Crap Batman! It looks like Prices are all over the map!):

In all seriousness, their graphs are pretty cool and certainly fun to play around with, and if you look at their charts, our values have clearly hit a bottom and are going up, baby!!!!

-Rent vs. Own Interactive Graph [theFrontSteps]
-Zillow Home Values For San Francisco

Tags: charts, data, graphs, Market News, market trends, real estate, trends, zillow

Posted in market info | 1 Comment »

Zillow Says My SF Residence Gained $300,000 In Value In Three Months!

You’ve likely seen comments on our site recently from the “Financial Samurai”, and wondered, “Is that spam?” It’s okay. We wondered the same thing, and we’ve dug a little deeper and found him to be legit. We were tipped off to one of his posts that uses Zillow to back up his claim that “Net Worth Is Rubbish. We’re not so concerned with the look into net worth, rather than the fact that ” in a span of 3 months, [his] primary [San Francisco] residence gained a whopping $300,000!” Gotta love those Zillow Zestimates.

Here’s more:

These values mean NOTHING. Zillow or an appraiser can say a property is worth whatever they want, but unless they’re willing to write you a check, don’t bank on it. Yes, I admit I feel a little bit more buoyant now that the stock markets are on fire, and the property market has rebounded a little bit. However, until I have no mortgage on my rental property [both properties of which are in San Francisco], I don’t include this as an asset even though it generates positive cash flow.

Strike your private equity, rental property, furniture, and bunny rabbit from your net worth calculation. Your illiquid assets are only worth as much as someone will pay for them. Even though we are out of the recession (Tim Geithner told me), and are back to the go go days (hard to get restaurant reservations on the fly anymore), don’t trust for a second your assets are worth as much as some appraiser or website says. Write your assets off, and revisit them once you’ve liquidated.

Thanks Samurai.

-Financial Samurai [website]

Tags: zillow

Posted in Readers’ Reports | 4 Comments »

More Sara, Less Zestimate

Having just spent 4:45 of our lives watching this entire spiel about “while the Zestimate’s fun to kind of get an idea…”, it’s really not accurate so don’t waste your time, we’re left with a few thoughts.

1. Sara is cute
2. Sara’s lip gloss sparkles
3. Sara’s hair shines, but how would it look brunette
4. Sara is really thinking the Zestimate is a total load of shit and will go up and down 3 times a week whenever they refresh the data, and she can’t believe she has to read that drivel, but her options will pay off someday, so she’ll keep reading and thinking of her next pedicure
5. Why a turtle neck?
6. More Sara, less Zillow psycho babble
7. Yes, we love poking fun at Zillow, always have, always will…that doesn’t mean we don’t admire their technology and vision.

Tags: Real Estate Technology, zillow

Posted in Real Estate Technology | No Comments »

Ah Zillow, You’re Still Getting All Of This Attention

We’re just going to keep our lips sealed on this and quote the email we received:

I’ve come across several properties for sale where the Zillow page was not accurate. [No Way! Seriously...okay, we couldn't resist.]

I understand if the listing agent doesn’t want to “deal” with Zillow (doesn’t believe in zillow, doesn’t want the zillow liability, doesn’t want/have access etc.), but I don’t understand why a listing agent would mess up the Zillow page by adding one line of information that is not accurate, appropriate, systematic, professional – you name it.

My question to sellers: Do you expect your listing agent to do a good job on the Zillow page? Do you check? Would you specifically request it (written in contract)?

My question to agents: What are your best arguments 1. To stay away from the zillow page of your listing 2. To mess up the page (*) or 3. To update the listing in a thorough and professional manner (with or without the help of the seller).

(*) Mess up= update only part of the information so Zillow will not be able to accuratly record the sale. I’m specifically mad at the description paragraph when using unreadable abbreviations [even though] zillow is free, with unlimited space, and THE place to babble at will about the property (including, but not limited to mentioning the websites related to that listing.)

thanks

…holding back all further snarky Zillow comments.

Tags: zillow

Posted in theFrontSteps | 4 Comments »

Neighborcity.com…Waste More Time

A reader kindly forwarded us to a “new” website called, Neighborcity and we gotta say, aren’t Trulia, and Zillow enough?

We didn’t see anything on this site worth discussing that isn’t already found elsewhere. To us, this site is a complete waste of time. Focus your time on Trulia, Zillow (if you must to get a very, very, very rough estimate of your home’s value), and your local MLS. If you want community, go to Trulia, but beware the Realtor answers are usually loaded to bait you in.

Oh, one last thing, check the ranking of agents on Neighborcity. We’ve learned our lesson about calling out fellow agents, but that data is clearly flawed.

Thanks for the tip to the site, best of luck to them. We are fans of technology in real estate and applaud all efforts, but we weren’t impressed. We look forward to be proven wrong.

[Editor's Note: Okay, we took another look at the site from the perspective of someone shopping for a home somewhere in the country. We're used to dealing with internet savvy buyers and sellers, so we're a bit jaded. We can see value in the site for those that are just beginning their home search and land on this site a la Google.]

Tags: home search, real estate, Real Estate Technology, Realtor, savvy buyers, technology, theFrontSteps, trulia, zillow

Posted in Real Estate Technology | 9 Comments »