Rachel Massey's (annarborappraiser) Blog

First review designations conferred   Congratulations Jennifer Marshall, Justin Slack and Gilbert Valdez!!!

January 25, 2014 Washtenaw County snapshot   On January 11, 2014 I posted a snapshot of the Washtenaw County market showing the number of arm’s length sales in each school district as well as the change in price per square foot over time and the current number of offerings and houses under contra...

http://www.appraisalbuzz.com/buzz/blog/2014/01/18/non-lender-valuation-consumers-should-tread-carefully   Good stuff Woody!   For anyone considering getting an appraisal for non-lending work, please read. Woody makes a compelling argument for why you do not want to engage an appraiser based on fe...

Even homogeneous markets are best served with personal observation A couple of weeks ago I ran a posting of recent closed sales in the Ann Arbor market compared to four online-automated valuation models. The variances between actual sales price and these models were extreme even though the houses...

    Bromley Park   Typical Bromley houses Bromley Park is a subdivision developed and built by Pulte Homes from 2002 through 2004, south of Geddes, north of Clark and east of Harris in Superior Township in the Willow Run Public school district. It encompasses the streets East and West Avondale Ci...

Verification As Realtors ® most of you have had the experience of calls, emails and even text messages from appraisers who are trying to verify information in a sale that you participated in. As annoying as this can be, it is important, in particular if there are any unusual circumstances to the ...

Measuring market change Most of the measurements we see reported in the MLS relate to median price change over time, not price per square foot. As house sizes rise, the price per square foot falls and does so because price per square foot includes not only the gross living area, as well as the ga...

Most of us have seen comparisons between appraised values and the valuation models accessible via the web. I hadn’t seen an actual comparison to recent closed sales and these models, so thought it would be an interesting exercise to see how they stack up with properties that closed within the pas...

A case for segmenting data in market trends I’m hearing so much buzz about the rising prices nationally, but real estate is local. Our market in Washtenaw County has largely been increasing in price, but some of the data observed is skewed in my opinion. Take the following example: all sales in t...

One of the market indicators that I do not see discussed very often (if at all) is something I label the “contract-to-listing ratio”. What this is, is simply a measure of how many houses in a given market are under contract at any one time compared to the total number of listings. For example, th...