An important new product is now available for home buyers and home owners to get an accurate view of future home values. Pricing Nation is a residential real estate forecasting company that reports on the future changes in individual home values, and has recently launched in the Boston Metropolitan area (MSA) as its beta market.
Pricing Nation offers two primary products: its “Home Investment Report Card” identifies and grades the top eight factors affecting a homes’ value, and concludes with the overall change in value for the home over the next 12 months. The “Neighborhood Report” provides an overview of the zip code of your choice, with the future change in value for the average home, the range of value changes across all homes, and benchmarks this against the greater metropolitan area.
Pricing Nation was co-founded by Tony Ettinger, a financial services analytics leader and entrepreneur, and Raj Koganti, also a financial services entrepreneur. The company was built under the guidance of a team of advisors with backgrounds in real estate, data mining, and predictive analytics. It is currently offering forecasts in the greater areas of Boston, Massachusetts (MSA) with growth to more U.S. cities in the coming year. The company was founded in 2011, but did not launch until early 2013.
In the current housing market climate, it is more critical than ever to fully understand the local economics of your real estate market as opposed to relying on national trends. Supply and demand factors are critical in projected valuations and accurate data is a real game changer in a home investment and valuation. In a recent blog post by Brian Ramirez, Chief Revenue Officer of Pricing Nation, he offers an example of an area forecast, “We’ve just released our newest home value forecasts for the Boston MSA, and are pleased to announce that home prices are expected to increase by 1.74% through February 2014. While there are numerous factors that impact value, two local drivers impacting the change in the Boston area include average weekly wages and homeowner vacancies. Homeowner vacancies saw a decrease of 52.4% from Q3 to Q4. This factor was partially suppressed by a small increase in average weekly earnings (0.42% increase from Q3 to Q4 2012).”
A Report Card for Grownups
Pricing Nation’s models can accurately forecast changes in future home values, and all forecasts are made a full twelve months in advance. According to the Methodology page on their site, Pricing Nation’s live forecasts have been less than one point away from actual changes in home values as reported by S&P/Case-Shiller (a home price index that reports on actual changes in residential real estate values). The predictive analytics measure extensive variables in a specific location, such as business growth, changes in average wages, previous housing prices, real estate foreclosures, and the type of home. This information and more creates an in-depth “Report Card” to help the educated home owner, buyer, or real estate professional make a more informed decision.
According to the website, www.pricingnation.com, Pricing Nation does not use Automated Valuation Models, (AVMs) which is a simplified and standard valuation used by most real estate arenas. Pricing Nation describes their valuations this way, “Our proprietary models assess multiple demand and supply factors that affect changes in local home prices, and then apply those to your home. We use a suite of regression models that have been back-tested on data during periods when homes prices have both gone up and down to reach statistically significant confidence in our forecasts (by measure of the R2 value). Our forecasting models are highly statistically significant. We forecast changes in home price based on factors that matter to your specific home, making our Home Investment Report Card the most reliable tool available on the market.”
Priced Right
Pricing Nation publicly tracks and reports its performance for full transparency to its customers, in its quest to be the industry leader in real estate forecasting. Zip code forecasts (Neighborhood Report) are currently offered for free, specific properties (Home Investment Report Card) are only $20 for a detailed report. The potential of this product has many avenues of use for varied professions as well as the average home buyer.
Win a FREE Home Investment Report Card ($20 value), simply by leaving a comment below. We will be giving away one free report card to the most insightful comment pertaining to how you anticipate using Pricing Nation’s reports! Please note that the reporting data is currently only available in the seven counties within the Boston MSA (Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, Plymouth, and Suffolk in MA, and Rockingham and Strafford in NH).
Website: www.pricingnation.com
Blog: www.pricingnation.wordpress.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/PricingNationCo
Twitter: www.twitter.com/pricingnation
Very interesting product, I really like the concept.
I would love to see your value forecast for my property and zip code! Specifically I would be interested to see the factors that will influence property value over the next 12 months!