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A review by rick2
Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate by Spencer Rascoff, Stan Humphries
2.0
Freakonomics but in real estate.
Owners of Zillow share their advice for selling and buying a home backed by data. Same issues here as with Freakonomics. Interesting correlations but I’m wary of the proposed causations.
For example. Homes that end in 9 before the zeros end up selling for more. A home priced at 149,000 will end up selling for more than the same home priced at 150,000. Their advice “price your home with a 9” fails to take into account a whole suite of other factors. Are homes priced at 149,000 more likely to be sold by a professional (realtor, investor) who will maximize their knowledge of how to sell a home? Are those homes sold by owners who work in marketing or business, and perhaps know how to negotiate a sale better or present their home for maximum value. Do homes sold for a round number come from less motivated sellers? Or perhaps there’s entirely different reasons. However the authors seem happy to propose their answer and move on. This lack of true investigation is frustrating, but understandably outside the scope of this short book.
The facts are fun nonetheless. And there are plenty of amusing contradictions to conventional wisdom around home purchases.
Owners of Zillow share their advice for selling and buying a home backed by data. Same issues here as with Freakonomics. Interesting correlations but I’m wary of the proposed causations.
For example. Homes that end in 9 before the zeros end up selling for more. A home priced at 149,000 will end up selling for more than the same home priced at 150,000. Their advice “price your home with a 9” fails to take into account a whole suite of other factors. Are homes priced at 149,000 more likely to be sold by a professional (realtor, investor) who will maximize their knowledge of how to sell a home? Are those homes sold by owners who work in marketing or business, and perhaps know how to negotiate a sale better or present their home for maximum value. Do homes sold for a round number come from less motivated sellers? Or perhaps there’s entirely different reasons. However the authors seem happy to propose their answer and move on. This lack of true investigation is frustrating, but understandably outside the scope of this short book.
The facts are fun nonetheless. And there are plenty of amusing contradictions to conventional wisdom around home purchases.