Frankly Price Predictor Launch! Are you down with FPP?

FPP stands for Frankly Price Predictor and it is the coolest new feature on FranklyMLS.com. So cool, it is patent pending.

The goal of FPP is to predict a home’s closing price, IF IT SOLD TODAY.  Disclaimer: Please do NOT take it seriously. Consider it more like a TOY (at least for now).

FPP uses historic listing data (see below) to predict the price. It  is NOT an AVM (which uses tax data and home data). Try a search for Arlington Condos.

An “AVM” is an Automated Valuation Model. The focus is on “value,” and it is for every home, listed or not.

Tools like Zillow’s Zestimate and Cyberhomes, use public data and recent sales. Many consider them wildly inaccurate. But heck, it makes for GREAT marketing! (Hats off to the Zillow team!). How “accurate” are they? In a Zillow report, the DC area is one of their most “accurate” areas, yet not even 50% of homes close within 5% of the Zestimate. So over 50% of $500k homes are off by over $25k!

Are Zestimates better than tax data, sure! Will we still show Zestimates on FranklyMLS? Sure. The more data the better, right? Is it better than a Realtor combing through comps, heck no (and they disclose that it is not a Realtor replacement).

How is FPP different than all those other “AVMs” or Automated Valuation Models are “value” estimators?

FPP quantifies what agents and homebuyers do today, use their GUT FEELING. It looks at the listing and based on multiple variables, it gives a prediction for what the home might sell for IF IT SOLD TODAY. (not if it sat for another 90 days).

What listing data might go into a FPP?

  • Days on the Market (obviously a biggy)
  • Number of price drops
  • Listing completeness (ie fewer photo homes sell for less See Photoless? Save $15k post)
  • Listing agent’s past performance (see FranklyCRA.com)
  • Brokerage performance
  • Short sale, vs regular sale, foreclosures, new home
  • User data, ie. how you save and watch homes.
  • And much more listing data including location (some places drop faster than others), price range (certain price points drop more than others) etc.

How will FPP be displayed in Spreadsheet mode? Can I turn it off?

Searches will now default to be sorted by the FPP price! Why? Because who wants to see a home listed at $538,000 with no price drops after 132 days, next to a new listing at $540,000? We all know the 132 home will sell for much less (if it sells), so why not put it lower on the list with the $480k group? Also for those searching up to $500k, they might never have seen the home. Until now.

Also for simplicity sake, I rounded the FPP number to the nearest $1,000. I have always hated talking in terms of $538,283. So now that I built my own pricing model, I can do it my way. Clear and easy so digesting 100 homes on a page is a breeze.

Yes. You can turn off the FPP sort by picking a sort option by List Price. Then it will remember your settings for future searches.

How will FPP be displayed in the full listing mode?

By the penny!

Yep, a real time dropping price$$$. Heck, the longer a home sits, the lower the price,

so why not reflect it in real time? Remember, this is a toy, and NOT to be taken so seriously as to effect how you offer on a home. That would be silly.

So what do you think? Useful? Wasteful?

Are you down with FPP?

Frank LLosa

Owner FranklyMLS.com and Broker FranklyRealty.com

Crystal ball Photo by katerha, gut photo by sundaykofax, toy photo by doegox

p.s. Up next… soon you can enter in your work address and get real time distances to your work from each home for sale.

  • 24
  • June
  • 2011

17 Responses to “Frankly Price Predictor Launch! Are you down with FPP?”

  1. Anne says:

    Funny read. Seems like it would be a a great cross-referencing tool. Very ingenious. :)

  2. myrna says:

    This is Great! I wished we had it here in South Carolina, what a wonderful listing and selling tool!!!

  3. Linda says:

    Gotta love all your hard work and anything to lp in these marketing times!
    However, the “gut feeling” photo was priceless.
    Thanks for the update, had time to read since my client stood me up this afternoon.

    Linda

  4. Peggy James says:

    Very interesting Frank. I think the FPP can be used for another angle as well.I searched for my own listings and contracts to see how this applied and found the FPP to be quite accurate. That said, in the current real estate market conditions here in Prince William County Virginia,on the ratified contracts our team has pending most placed in the top ten on FPP. All were mulitple offer situations. Just food for thought for Home Buyers. ” If you, do not want to get into a bidding war. In my opinion the FPP can be used to help you potentially avoid that situation.” Look at homes a little lower on the list and then let your Buyer Agent start the negotiations.

    Peggy

  5. Kim says:

    I love the FPP, but you don’t include one for a house I have my eye on. Are you still getting around to adding it to all your listings, or is there some other reason this house didn’t warrant an FPP figure? The house has been on the market for 303 days (over two listings) and NO price drops.

    Thanks….

  6. am says:

    there are some homes that we looked at in Maryland area that had mold and chimney was leaking…yet FPP was way higher than “true” value of the house. i guess that is why we cannot use it, just like Zillow.

  7. Kitty says:

    Is FPP captured when the house goes under contract? I would like to see this displayed in the Solds results (just have “—” now). This would help determine if it’s something to pay attention to for specific neighborhoods.

  8. FranklyRealty.com says:

    Hello Kitty,
    I recently turned on the FPP for logged users for both active and under contract homes. I did it for UC so that agents (on both sides) can take a look and be like “wow, that is pretty good” or “Geez that stinks.” One agent told me it was off by just $1,000 on a $672,000 home.

    Anyhow, to answer your question, we do not show it for solds. In part because we don’t want people doing exactly what you are referring to. It should not be used for offers. It instead is a fun tool and it helps with searching to put the homes in a more realistic order (ie a home for 100 days at $500k with no price drop shouldn’t be shown with new listings at $505k.

    I am considering opening up the FPP to non registered users. THoughts?

  9. Tim Hagman says:

    Does it take any real (computing) resources per listing? If not, then go ahead and open it up (but keep an eye out for it showing up on other sites with no attribution). If it does (take resources), then make people click a button to get it, and have that button say “If you were registered, this would show up automatically” before populating the field.

    My $.02,

    –Tim

  10. Philip Atio says:

    Nice work. Too bad you didn’t do FPP two years ago. Then you could be basking in the glow of taking your company public to the tune of $1 billion as Zillow just did.

    Of course you should have called it “Festimate.” FPP lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.

    I must say I prefer hedonic models like Zillow’s. That comes from the hedonist in me.

    FPP for non-registered users? Sure, why not? We all love random numbers. The more the merrier.

  11. Carla Jewell says:

    Love it! It helps in the thinking process.

  12. Milan Cole says:

    Very cool… you’ve built your own AVM. Be interesting to to run it against a set of sold properties and see how it compares to Zillow and others.

  13. FranklyRealty.com says:

    I don’t consider it an AVM since it does not talk to the value of a property.
    Also I did compare it to solds and found that it was 98% of the time within 5% of list price, versus Zestimates that are 45% within 5% of list.

  14. Betty says:

    Please help me find the way to FPP. I can’t figure out how to get to access it.

  15. FranklyRealty.com says:

    Betty, you have to be logged in to see it. Login from the front page.

  16. Seth Geoghegan says:

    I love the site and think the feature is interesting but ultimately not useful. I don’t have a problem having the FPP on the property page itself (i.e. franklymls.com/), because that’s where I expect to see a lot of details about a property. However, I’m not a fan of having the FPP showing up in the search results and favorites. The problem is when I’m scrolling through a list of search results and the column headers scroll off the page, I’m not sure if I’m looking at the list price or the FPP price. I keep having to scroll up to the top of the search results to remind myself which price I’m looking at.

    This can be frustrating because I’m really interested in the list price, not a predicted sales price.

    Keep up the good work!

  17. FranklyRealty.com says:

    Hey Seth! Thanks for the input. I see three ways to handle this.

    1) We can offer an “x” option to collapse that column. We offer this for a few columns
    2) We can freeze the toolbar so that when you scroll down, it goes down with you

    Also keep in mind that the FPP are rounded off with a “k” like $584k and not $584,000 I did that in part to make a quick visual easier to distinguish.

    As I assume you already do, you can make the results sort by list price.

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