As a real estate agent, you know how important it is to keep your finger on the pulse of the local property market.
With the entry of Big Data, the real estate industry is getting more competitive, and the market players are learning the ropes to using sophisticated technology to ascertain property value. The results are favorable when you employ data to help you make informed decisions. Usually, with web scraping, data is extracted so that different stakeholders, like appraisers, lenders, and investors, learn to estimate the present and future values of any property.
Property appraisal is an essential part of the real estate industry. It determines a property's value and helps buyers, sellers, and investors make decisions about buying and selling properties.
Property value appraisals is a professional assessment conducted by real estate organizations to determine a property's worth at any time. The real estate market often deals with appraisals as they occur infrequently and also because each property is unique (different floor plans, amenities, or locations). A professional appraiser will use a variety of criteria to determine the value of a property including location, condition of the property, size of the lot, square footage of the home or building on site (if applicable), amenities in the area (schools, parks, etc.) nearby businesses, etc.
Property value appraisal can be done quickly and easily with web scraping. Web scraping is a process that involves extracting data from the internet and putting it into a format that can be easily used in other applications. By collecting information about all of the homes in a given area, we can create an accurate picture of what properties in that area are worth. That way, you get a clear idea of what your home might be worth on the market!
Such data helps in sales listing, generating leads, investment analysis, property insurance, and taxation. Even a buyer or seller finds relevance in this concept of property value appraisal. While sellers determine the value of their property with a lot of bias, the buyer tends to price it lower. For a fair assessment, there is a need for error-free data that is possible through automated valuation models as opposed to traditional approaches.
What is property value appraisal in real estate?
A property appraisal is an unbiased assessment of a piece of property. Appraisal during a purchase-and-sale transaction estimates whether the sale price matches the property condition, location, and amenities offered. However, in the case of refinancing, the appraisal will protect the lender from offering the borrower an approximate loan amount and nothing more.
Rates of similar properties, market trends, and square footage can influence a property’s appraisal value. Usually, a licensed appraiser conducts the appraisal of the property and prepares a report to help banks, lenders, and investors decide. The appraiser mentions required points on a standard required form. This report will eventually determine the future of the property.
During the inspection, the appraiser must note down if there’s a need for maintenance or repairs to the property. And based on the report, if the lender finds a difference in the selling price and the appraisal, they may not go through with the deal. Further, a buyer can try to negotiate a good deal using this report.
Certain factors can affect property appraisal – Death or disaster (lowers value by 15-25%) in the location or around the area, odors, bad neighbors (5-10%), etc. Usually, such stigmatized properties are a nightmare for realtors as they are quite difficult to sell.
The rise of Automated valuation models (AVM) in Real estate
The detailed process of manually retrieving data concerning the size, property type, selling price, location, and amenities is now a thing of the past. Instead, automated valuation models (AVMs) are here to make the above process easier. They involve using one or more mathematical techniques to determine the value of a property without human intervention.
AVMs provide results after gathering property data from databases. Therefore, the better the quality of data, the more accurate the estimation will be. Plus, AVMs use a mathematical formula to arrive at results. But if the property information and formula are incorrect, the final results will be inaccurate. Even so, the introduction of AVMs has helped save investors and lenders time, energy, and resources. When you can get a quick assessment for a property, you save yourself a lot of work, especially when the market is volatile.
Since AVMs follow the algorithm of machine learning, they do not take into account factors like whether a buyer has a good credit history or not. They only consider data points like price trends, location, and other property information to arrive at an estimation. They have nothing to do with buyers or sellers. Further, AVMs cannot change the value if there’s damage or renovations like fresh paint or new light fixtures. They do not concern themselves with the condition of the property.
How web scraping can help in property value appraisals
There is a lot more real estate data present in the current era than ever before. It offers a lot of possibilities to leverage data using web scraping services. Whether you’re listing the property online for an accurate price or trying to secure a loan, you’d want to know the worth of the property to make an informed decision before investing.
Web scraping helps appraise property value by extracting information available online. As a result, you don’t have to go through the traditional route of appraisal, which takes a lot more time than the automated method. Instead, web scraping will help extract property data at scale into exportable spreadsheets so that appraisers can make strategic decisions quickly.
Real estate data can help you get a more accurate valuation by providing information on current market conditions and trends. You can use this data, along with your own knowledge of local zoning laws, environmental concerns, etc., to determine what kind of impact those factors will have on the property's value.
It is also a relatively untapped market, therefore, market players in the real estate industry can use it to stay ahead of the competition. And when there’s data to back you up, a buyer can justify the cost he wants to pay for the property, and the seller can justify the sale price.
Along with property value appraisals, web scraping helps monitor vacancy rates, estimate rental yields, understand market trends and monitor vacancy rates. A property appraisal report typically includes extracting details about the below data points:
Property type
Sale price
Location
Amenities
Monthly rental price
Parking spaces
Property agent
Structural status and issues
Notes about the surrounding area
Market trends
Current value
Prices of similar properties in the neighborhood
To learn more about how you can use these data points to your advantage, check out our blog on the 13 Ways our Customers are Using Real Estate Market Data
Wrapping up
Web scraping can shape the real estate industry with its many benefits. For example, leveraging relevant data can formulate financial strategies to help you one-up your competitors.
With web scraping, you can collect real-time data from different sources. And when you have information on the real estate market you operate in, your competitors, customer expectations, and purchasing power of the people in the area, you can multiply your profits.
But, web scraping can be equally tricky, which is why you need data extraction experts like Datahut. A trusted name in the world of web scraping, we are known for delivering quality and efficient results. So, if you want to rise above your competition and grow your revenue, Contact us today!