Real Estate Genius Investment Software Blog

Here’s a handy tool for your bookmarks: the House Flipping Renovation Budget Calculator.

The real estate investing calculator site Real Estate Genius has just launched an affiliate program. If you have your own site or blog, this is an opportunity for you to start earning money from your visitors. Real Estate Genius Affiliates will earn 50% of revenue generated by the customers they refer… that also includes 50% of the customers’ ongoing monthly membership fees! If you refer other affiliates to the program, you’ll also earn 25% of any revenue those affiliates earn.

As an additional incentive, you earn $5.00 just for joining! 

To check out the details and join, visit:
Real Estate Genius Affiliate Program

Bloggers, join a viral effort to build links to your blog.

What do you have to do to join? Merely copy the links below, and put them in a new post, adding the last site you got the Zlist from. And watch as people copy the list from your blog and pass it on.

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Saw an interesting article in the Wall St Journal this week. How Good Are Zillow’s Estimates? discusses, surprisingly, the accuracy of Zillow’s estimates. Bet you never saw that coming.

In any case, the article pulls out a few interesting data of interest to Zillow users, based on research performed by the Journal:

• * Median difference between Zillow’s ‘Zestimate’ and a property’s actual sale price was +/- 7.8%.
• * Zillow was within 5% on about 1/3 of properties.
• * Zillow was more than 25% off on about 11%.
• * Zillow tends to perform best in neighborhoods where houses are of similar quality and price range. It underperforms on very high end and very low end properties.
• * Zillow’s estimate can only be as accurate as the information available, which may not take into account, for example, that the house recently burned out or was flooded.

At this point in its existence, it should be clear to all reasonable observers that Zillow presents a data point. The numbers it provides should not be the sole basis on which you make a pricing or negotiating decision. However, the accuracy is reasonable, especially in the middle-market. And the ‘implied’ accuracy (Zillow presents its estimate of a house’s value right down to the dollar, ie. $157,243) can be a powerful psychological tool in real estate negotiating, where so many decisions are made solely on emotional, and non-data-driven bases.

Over time, we can expect Zillow, or competing sites with the same goals, to continue to refine their algorithms and improve their accuracy as more of a track record is established. It’s a powerful trend to watch, and another threat to the hegemony of real estate agents over the buying and selling process.

Now this is a cool website - www.zillow.com. This website attempts to tell you what a house is worth right now. Just type in an address, any address - your house, your parent’s house, your boss’s house, your ex-wife’s house. Instant cocktail party conversation!

How accurate is it? It apparently depends on where you live, as some areas of the country are better served than others. Zillow claims that most valuations are within 10%, so hey, this is a great place to start from. Zillow will also show you all of the comparable homes in a neighborhood, as well as past purchase history of a property. Best of all, it’s free, easy to use, and fast.

I suggest utilizing Zillow when doing property analysis with Real Estate Genius - this way, you can analyze a property using both the asking price as well as Zillow’s estimate. Use the Zillow estimate as a negotiating tool (assuming it’s lower than asking price). Plug the Zillow estimate into the Real Estate Genius calculator, and use the resulting financial statements to show the seller why the price is too high. It’s a brave new world.