An automated estimate reads the deed, the square footage and the last sale, and it stops there. On this island that leaves out the half that decides the number — whether the building has had its inspection, whether the reserve schedule is funded, and what the association has already voted to spend. I read that before I write anything down.
An automated estimate is perfectly good for a question like whether a street has got dearer over five years, and I use them for that myself. It is a poor instrument for the only question that matters when you are deciding whether to sell, because everything that makes one unit here worth more than the identical unit above it is either inside the property or inside the association's filing cabinet.
Which way it faces, what the light does in the afternoon, what has been replaced and what has been patched. On a beach the salt keeps its own record, and a model reading a tax roll cannot tell a window replaced last spring from one that has been there since the building went up.
For a condominium or a co-op I go through what the association has published: the milestone inspection summary if the building is old enough to need one, the structural integrity reserve study, the budget and what has actually been voted through. Two identical units can be worth materially different amounts because of what is in those documents, and nothing in an automated estimate looks at them.
The report shows which sales it leans on and why, which ones were discarded, and what was adjusted for. If you disagree with a comparable, you can say so and point at the line. A number with no working behind it cannot be argued with, which is a strange property for something you are about to make a decision on.
The address, the building if there is one, and how to reach you. It takes about as long as reading this sentence twice.
Joan comes herself. Usually an hour or so at the property, at whatever time suits you.
Recorded sales and MLS records for the same building first, then comparable buildings on the same stretch. If it is a condominium or a co-op, this is also when I ask for whatever the association has published, because that is usually the slow part.
A written value range with the sales it rests on, the adjustments made, and a short strategy memo. It arrives by email, and I will walk you through it on the phone if you would like — no call is scheduled unless you ask for one.
Every one of these is assembled the same way, and the sequence is the point: where there is an association, its documents and its reserve study get read alongside the comparable sales rather than after them, because on a condominium that is the half of the file that moves the number. The pages shown here are an illustration, not a client's report.
The unit shows well and the exposure is the good one. What sets it apart from the two closest sales in this sample is not the finishes but the file behind it — the association here funded its reserve schedule rather than deferring it, and across the six comparables assembled for this illustration that difference is worth about +2.4% against the ones still carrying deferred workwhich accounts for most of the spread in the range above.
We would recommend pricing at $985K and leading the marketing with the reserve study rather than the balcony, because the buyers most likely to move quickly here are the ones who have already been frightened by another building. Expect the first fortnight to be quiet and the questions to be about the association…
What you type here is used to write your report and to reach you about it. No newsletter, no drip sequence, and nothing passed to a third party.
Your submission is emailed to me and, where a private notification channel is configured, mirrored there so it cannot be missed. Nobody outside this practice buys it, rents it or receives it.
Yes. There is no charge for the report and no obligation to list afterwards — not a discounted rate, not a credit against a commission, nothing.
Most of the people who ask are not. A written figure is what an estate needs, what a trustee needs, what an insurer argues about, and what you want in front of you before an association votes on an assessment you will be paying for. Nothing about asking obliges you to list.
No. The form emails your submission to me and, if a private notification channel is configured, mirrors it there so nothing gets lost. It is not sold, not passed to a lead-buying service, and not added to a mailing list.
A model works from what has been recorded: the last sale, the square footage, the tax roll. It has not been inside your property and it has never opened your association's file, which on this island is where a good deal of the value sits. The report you get from me says what I saw, what I read, and which sales I leaned on — and where I am uncertain, it says that too.
There is no charge and nothing to sign. If the answer turns out to be that this is not the year to sell, you will have that in writing too, which is worth knowing either way.
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