20-clifton-widget-1009.jpg
20-Clifton-Place-0409b.jpgThe widget underprices again! We’ve gotten used to the pricing widget being off by 10 to 15 percent, but in the case of 20 Clifton Place, a three-family in Clinton Hill that was on the market last spring for $899,000, it was off by 20 percent. The average reader prediction was for a selling price of $679,708 and the house closed on September 24 for $850,000. Quite a difference! Meanwhile next door, 22 Clifton Place, which never was a House of the Day, also closed last month for $1,200,000, quite a bit below what it was asking when it was an Open House Pick back in 2007 and in 2008.
House of the Day: 20 Clifton Place [Brownstoner] GMAP


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  1. Obviously it was a test of my suspicious take on widget, antidope. Why would I disclose otherwise?

    “you’ve created quite a track record”

    Yeah, DOW8000SP800. Soon half off.

    “whatever you say can and will be used against you… ;)”

    Bring it!

    ***Bill Thompson for Mayor***

  2. I was able to appraise $500K twice. Can’t this be restricted per user?

    ***Bid half off peak comps***

    Posted by: Brownstones Half Off at April 7, 2009 12:00 AM

    that was on this very hotd. (probably the only time you’ve hit the button…twice…right?) you’ve created quite a track record.

    whatever you say can and will be used against you… 😉

  3. BHO — I’ve always said that whether the widget lowballs is an analytically distinct question from what direction the market is headed and how fast. Widget is a snapshot comparison at a single point in time of where b’stoner eaders think the market for a particular house is at, with accuracy judged by the ultimate sales. It just seems logically flawed to assume widget is right and all buyers are wrong when the widget is trying to guage the market and buyers are the market. Just because market price for a house is x doesn’t mean six months later the market won’t be up or down another 5-10%. And if market goes down later, it doesn’t make the widget right in retrospect, because the widget doesn’t ask what you think the house will be worth in six months, or a year, or five, or ten, it asks what you think it is worth now. One or two buyers might have overpaid compared to market, but the argument doesn’t hold for 12 out of 21. And if the market goes down 15% in six months, widget will still underprice at the new level. Widget won’t match sales then any more than it does now.

  4. “Read your owns posts, BHO.”

    Slow down, ‘slope. I also said you might be right. I guess I stand corrected.

    “Now we know from the widget that all this downgrading on brownstoner has little effect on the market. Perhaps that’s what’s really bugging you.”

    The widget doesn’t bug me. I rarely participate. For good measure, the widget is always way above what I would enter anyway. You know and I know that it is these dire macroeconomic conditions that effect the market, not the widget.

    ***Bill Thompson for Mayor***

  5. as one would expect in nyc, people intentionally lowball stuff to game their competition and don’t want to represent the market (fellow bidders as well as sellers) showing a strong hand. i think widget has those stoner values, but also the brokers are there automatically above ask on each one too so it seems to even out. probably fewer at both extremes in the real market. weak dollar isn’t going to help either with those high tail bids.

    my personal theory is that there is a curve where most buyers see value, and a couple on the upper tails, for whatever reason (they either want or feel the need to have it now) but regardless it is the brokers job to convince the bidder the the rest of the curve is right there with them, or at least several motivated parties. very low inventory brownstone brooklyn makes this a reality, so people have bought all the way down on the high side of the “value ranges” for any particular property. and they will continue to do so, until there’s no more “down”.

    and it is this upper tail which is and will continue to create the sales and comps in inventory starved brownstone brooklyn, unless inventory is somehow suddenly quadrupled. the cash is there. whether any particular broker is good at the game is another issue, but there are a few that are better than you think. some of course are as fake as $3 bills and we’ve seen even the gullible money protest at that.

    on the flip side of the equation, there is a lot of competition in the middle of the pack, where it would come down to quality of buyer, but rarely i find it even comes to that. it doesn’t seem that the broker is trying to pull some people out of the pack into pushing their bids higher, but rather those buyers are already up there buying from a discount on list price (in some cases very low discount), not really psf or any absolute value.

  6. Read your owns posts, BHO. You wrote: “Yup. If enacted at brownstoner’s launch, the widget average would have been overpricing.” I disagree. Brownstoners, on average, always think the price is too high. True in bull and bear markets. You don’t need to read them all. It was commonly said of this site in the bull market that the last thing a seller would want is to be HOTD, because brownstoner readers will trash it and say the price was too high.

    Now we know from the widget that all this downgrading on brownstoner has little effect on the market. Perhaps that’s what’s really bugging you. The widget isn’t proof of the market’s direction — it doesn’t speak to that at all — but it is proof that you can’t use this site to talk down a house’s price.

  7. How about giving people an incentive to estimate as close to the actually sales price as possible. I would think you could track everyone’s estimates and at the end of the year award a $ prize to whoever was closest. Not only would we have a vested interest in the accuracy of the widget but it would probably drive up page views also.

  8. “But I also think there is no denying a bit of a grudge factor in the undervaluing on the widget”

    Slopey, I agree that this is a factor. I also think, irrational though it may be, some people are hoping that actual house prices will fall in line with the widget. If only wishing made it so.

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