It changes the buyers perceptions. Agent markets house at ONLY $200 per sf of living area. When they include basements or unpermitted in law quarters or ADUs the apparent price per sf of ‘living area’ becomes $150 -$175.

I bet most consumers like basements or other utilitarian areas. They may even be willing to pay a HIGHER price per sf of the base GLA for these nicer ancillary features (say $210 per sf or $220+-) but they should never be mislead into thinking these are permitted living areas by corelogic or anyone else.

What about when builders give options instead of the common in my area default tandem 3 car garage layout. Public records will often never reflect a buyers choice to make the 3rd garage a bedroom, which by default turns the 1/2 bath into a full bath. Public records are in error on the bed count, bath count, garage count, and the GLA. During the sell off after the crisis (short sale / REO), when agents or the banks simply pulled public records for their property characteristics, these properties often sold for $50,000 less than they should have based on other parties lack of policy, concern, or skillset. Considering its the American tax payer who is the financial backstop to such liabilities, who cares if the bank bailout was bigger than it should have been.

Some of the poorly aligned data seems intentional. Anyone else find zillow and Corelogic Realist systems approach of stating combined gla, both agla and basement, as a singular lead sizing figure to be difficult to work with? This hits me when I look at rentals, I have to run manual county research to sort it all out because these systems may not return appropriately separated agla vs bas figures. Look, bigger houses, that’s why they cost more. Regular consumers must be having a hard time making better informed decisions with this combined approach. So now that it’s so complicated, I need the avm? Special realty agent trick, simply price it at the peak of the Realist avm. Made their jobs easier and created a self perpetuating cycle which confirms the validity of the avm. Just ignore all this housing price inflation, then it all ties up nicely. Relationships of foreign investors buying up American housing at a record pace and their affiliations with monopolistic data companies? Coincidence?

Perfect example John. Much respect for the repetitive trips back into the field to double check your own work first, and then taking the time to understand the discrepancy.. 10 sf no big deal. 100 sf? Maybe. Depends on price per sf in your market. 186 sf? Absolutely! Nicely done.

That skews the hell out of any price per sf of living area analysis.

Even appraisers are sometimes caught up in the hype and puffery where visually apparent “third stories” in cities with two story limits are being counted as living area. Even though they are not on permits as living area; or shown in total certificate of occupancy or even on the architects plans as living area / habitable area.

Trained appraisers are capable of wading through the quagmire of deliberate deception. Big Data isn’t.

Anyone think being off by (more than) several thousand sf of living area on a multi million dollar property won’t eventually get noticed?

Banks don’t seem to care about that. They just want to be able to say they “saved” $50 to $150 per appraisal times 1,000,000 transactions. Even if those paltry savings result in HUNDREDS of BILLIONS in overstated collateral value; and or value-affecting adverse site conditions that Big Data ‘missed’.

I’m solidly with Hamp on this one. I’m not relying on Corelogic to do my job…anymore than I’m going to co sign appraisals performed in India, or ClearVal “appraisals”.

Wait, that’s the news page. This is the listen to podcast link. My favorite drive time financial hour, man I’ve learned so much from these guys over the years. One thing is for certain, these dudes are almost always right and are clearly very well informed. Click the date link for pop up player. If appraisal falls out I’m definitely getting into chicken nugget farming.

http://patriotarchives.blogspot.com/

https://allamericangold.com/

Who is replacing him the head of REVAA?

He will be missed…….NOT!

Zack is no longer at Fannie Mae