Central Ohio Real Estate Market News

I received a call from a student doing a research project on “homes for sale around golf courses” in Ohio. She was using Real Living HER’s site to search by subdivision and she had some questions, which I tried to answer.

She had some questions regarding Wedgewood (Powell) and Tartan Fields (Dublin). As I was telling her how to search by subdivision on Real Living’s site, I also explained that she would have to sort through the data because there were other subdivisions starting with the Wedgewood name that weren’t located around the Wedgewood golf course, such as Wedgewood Park and Wedgewood Place. There is Tartan Fields which IS  around the golf course but Tartan West isn’t. Then in New Albany, the main country club has homes in the MLS system coded as New Albany CC or simply NACC. She probably doesn’t know this and thus, will miss all those homes in her statistics, because the computer will only search for whatever name she puts in the search box.

I’m not sure where she lives, or if she even lives in Ohio, but without knowing all the nuances of the area, her data could be pretty flawed. No doubt she’ll face those same issues with other golf course homes when she does this research for the whole state.

Later after our conversation ended, I couldn’t help but think about what she’ll do with this report. I’m sure she’ll think it’s a pretty accurate report and will probably present it as such. I hope she gets an “A”.

However, what she will be doing with her “findings” is similar to what news reporters or real estate ”experts” do with their research. To quote an NAR ad, “they don’t know what they don’t know“. They gather the data, extrapolate from it, make their analysis, then present the material as FACT.

Something similar is occurring with some dot.com search engines that are trying to compete for $$$$ by capitalizing on the real estate market. The main one is, of course, Realtor.com - the granddaddy formed by the NAR, where buyers can search for homes. Two new upstarts are attempting to take over the prime spot. They are Trulia and Zillow. All three are offering ”estimates” of a home’s value. Zillow was the first to come out with their “Zestimate” which was/is so flawed they were sued. Trulia and Realtor.com have followed suit with their own estimates.

They use computers, algorithms, and other geeky stuff, to determine “value”. Unfortunately, just as with the student’s attempt to gather data, computers don’t know the nuances of the local area. For instance, for my own home, Zillow used a recent sale of a home 6 miles away in another town, in another school district, that has 4BR’s up (mine is a 3BR, 1st floor MBR). No real estate agent would EVER use such a home as a comp when advising sellers on how to price their home.

Real estate agents have a saying that ALL REAL ESTATE IS LOCAL. That’s why we keep advising people to really question what the “experts” are quoting as fact, because we’re in the best position to know how WRONG the data really can be.

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