Articles Tagged "AVM Reports"

As a real estate agent, one of the most important assets you provide is your expertise in pricing. A home must be "priced to sell" to meet the needs of both your client and the market. Left to their own devices, many people will overestimate the value of their own home and hinder their sales efforts.

Because of the emotional attachment that develops between a homeowner and property, it's crucial to demonstrate your advice is built on a sound foundation. Otherwise, you might encounter resistance and have difficulty coming to terms on pricing. That can cause trouble for you and your customer.

Until recently, most real estate agents and brokers handled this issue manually.

When a property goes up for sale, they would diligently do the necessary research. Gathering "comps" from the local area, they would look at location, size, and amenities to triangulate a solid price. In any discussion about price strategy, they could show the calculations that went into their work.

As valuable as that is, it takes precious time — time that's at a premium in fast-moving markets.

More and more agents in today's most desirable metro markets have run into the problem that by the time they complete their analysis, conditions have already changed. And explaining their rationale to a customer can still be counter-intuitive, creating the potential for confusion and lost confidence.

For these reasons and more, you should be using AVM.

AVM Takes the Guesswork Out of Pricing to Sell

An AVM — short for automated valuation model — does the hard work for you. You'll get accurate results fast, equipping your customers to take action. But how does it work, and how can you start leveraging it for your real estate practice?

AVM takes advantage of the latest artificial intelligence and machine learning combined with a key fact about real estate: Every transaction is public record. By analyzing recent local sales using a sophisticated mathematical model, it can generate an asking price aligned to market behavior.

A good AVM increases confidence while cutting manual work out of the equation:

• You no longer need to wait for a traditional appraiser to arrive to estimate a home's value
• You can give your customers helpful, actionable intelligence in a fraction of the usual time

Property transaction records are the "training data" for most AVMs. Some integrate data directly from the MLS system. Others synthesize estimates from a variety of trusted third-party data sources. In any case, the proof of an AVM's value is in how consistently it delivers estimates close to a final sales price.

Your Customers Already Trust AVM Without Knowing It

Homeowners love to scope things out and get a sense of what their home might sell for. No longer do they have to trawl through local open houses to get insight on what neighbors are buying and selling — instead, they go online and look for an automatically generated estimate.

While there are many popular websites using an AVM, all but the largest brokers have traditionally been cut out of the game. This deprives many independent brands of the opportunity to leverage AVM as the practical tool and rapport-building mechanism it already naturally is.

When you offer AVM, you have the opportunity to seamlessly follow your leads and customers from interest to action. And you no longer need to pay hefty licensing fees to do it. If you are a DeltaNET®6 customer, AVM is already a part of the trusted center of excellence that is your all-in-one real estate solution.

Accurate AVM Estimates Now Available in One Click

Imagine having an accurate, branded AVM report in just seconds — one that provides amazing context such as the average price of sold listings, average size of sold listings, and total number of sold listings a given zip code had over a period of twelve quarters or more.

Delta Media Group's previous AVM has been deployed on thousands of customer websites. Now, it evolves even further to provide even more accurate and granular information. This self-learning valuation tool will only get better and better as it crunches more data.

Some of the top highlights include:

• A clean, clear, and curated AVM report that empowers you to scan through data at a glance
• "Market Conditions" tab gives you a capsule overview of all market health signals in an area
• Valuation data from up to five trusted, objective sources, including Delta's AI-driven estimate
• Deeply integrated AVM experience to help you weather the effects of record low inventories
• "Door Knock" opportunities — you get leads even when the prospect provides no information
• "Current Demand Report" infuses a sense of urgency as visitors explore the AVM interface

It's time to take your business to the next level with AI.

Contact us to learn more or get started with DeltaNET AVM.

Let's start with the basics. What is an AVM? AVM stands for Automated Valuation Model, and in today's marketplace, it is one of the best tools at a brokerage's fingertip to help win new listings. For years, I have heard real estate agents push back on the idea of providing consumers with automated home value estimates being worthwhile. After all, those automated home value estimates used to be way off and lead to more uncomfortable conversations for real estate agents than positive ones.

That status quo has most certainly flipped in the last couple of years. Automated home value estimates have only continued to get more and more accurate. Certainly, they will never beat an estimate given by a licensed professional able to see the house in person. However, the industry has learned how to turn a potential home seller's curiosity into a new listing. This knowledge didn't come overnight, nor did the automated tools provide these curious prospective home sellers with a real-time home value estimate.

Delta Media Group® has been in the real estate technology software space dating back to the mid-90s (1994 to be exact, when we launched the first website in the country providing live MLS data & photos). It was shortly after the company moved from Sunnyvale, California, to Barberton, Ohio, in the early 2000's that the idea for automated home value estimates started to surface at Delta. A recent review of our Delta AVM platform revealed a history dating back to 2002, when the work first began on what would eventually turn into our built-in automated home-value tools.

Back in 2002, Delta Media Group was looking for a way to bring more accurate market data to the forefront of our website visitors' minds along with reverse prospecting tools. We looked to build tools to compile automatically generated email reports and landing pages that would feature up-to-date data about market trends in specific areas around the country. Building these types of reports and then further automating them to be emailed directly to potential home buyers and home sellers was a major project that was ultimately completed and launched in 2006 under our "VMA" product — otherwise known as Virtual Market Analysis.

The Virtual Market Analysis tool allowed customers on brokerage and agent websites to complete a short form, filling out details about their own home and information about the city and state where the home was located. While filling in these details, the customer would be prompted to fill out how often they'd like to receive automated updates about the market. The VMA would then provide the customer with a real-time market report showcasing how many homes were for sale in the market their home was located in, the average asking price for properties in that market, recent homes sold in the area and the buyer interest in that market. This system would also automatically generate a lead for an agent to be able to create a true Comparative Market Analysis (CMA) and reach back out to the prospective client.

The VMA tool was a hit, generating thousands upon thousands of leads for agents using the DeltaNET® platform for years. As with most tools in the DeltaNET, development never stopped. The VMA system saw continual refinement through the years, ultimately culminating in a partnership with a long-time Delta Media Group partner to expand our VMA product.

The project to expand the VMA into a full-fledged automated home value estimate service ultimately evolved into the AVM tool we have today. The product allows website users to enter their address directly from the website's homepage and be given a return of multiple home value estimates powered by data from sources like Collateral Analytics and RPR.

Since launching the AVM tool, we have delivered over 33,000,000 home value estimate requests.

Shortly after the full rollout of the AVM, we continued the expansion of the product. We added Zillow home value estimates (Zesitmates) as an option to the service, giving prospective sellers up to three different home value estimates with calls to action, getting the person to engage and become a lead opportunity. We introduced the concept of "Door-Knock leads" to help drive new listing potential. With this new concept, a client could enter an address and see home value estimates without filling out a contact form. This still would generate a new lead opportunity for the brokerage, who could add that address to their print-mailing rotation and try to farm engagement from properties that had been looked up online.

In the past few years, we expanded our AVM tool even further — this time redesigning the entire lead capture page from the ground up. Google maps street view of the property was refined, and buyer heat maps graphically showed the prospective home seller where potential homebuyers were saving searches that matched their property. The saved search data was compared directly against the AVM, giving us the ability to introduce reverse prospecting reports. For example, if a company had 500 potential buyers with saved searches running (EG; two bed, one bath, 300k max price in a specific school district) and a prospective seller ran an AVM on their property, that seller would be able to see that more than 500 people were looking for a property just like theirs if they listed the home. On the back end of the software, agents were able to run more detailed reverse prospecting reports to see all the homebuyers in their CRM that may be able to be connected with this prospective seller should they list their home.

We didn't stop there. More AVM data sources were also connected, introducing appraisal home estimates as another option for brokerages to connect. We developed our own in-house home value estimate tool and included it in the product at no additional charge, giving us a 5th home value report. This time, we also expanded our AVM tool to be included at no additional charge for all Delta Media Group website partners as a part of our SEO platform.

Ultimately, that brings us to today. More than 20 years since we first began working on our VMA product — which was designed to give automated marketing insights and generate CMA lead opportunities for agents — we at Delta are launching our own in-house CMA product: Delta Pitch. Delta Pitch is designed to be the industry's easiest-to-use, most automated CMA builder ever.

An agent using Delta Pitch would be able to generate a "quick-build" CMA in as little as one click. Enter the property's address, and click "build." You've now got a highly accurate, engaging CMA built into an interactive flipbook with comps, recently sold homes, information about the market and more. Delta Pitch comes pre-loaded with a variety of templates to select from, the ability to create your own CMA templates (with custom pages and more) and, of course, gives agents the ability to customize all of the information in that CMA to give an accurate recommendation to win the listing.

Here's the part that's even more exciting to us. Bringing things full circle, we wanted to push the envelope even further. One of the many features baked into the DeltaNET / Delta Pitch / Delta AVM platform will give us the ability to offer fully-automated CMA's. Picture this: a prospect visits your beautiful website and sees that they can enter their address to get home value estimates. They plug in their address and see a semi-accurate picture of their home's value.

Entering this address means that Delta Pitch has automatically built an interactive CMA and emailed it to an agent who gets this lead opportunity. No manual work is needed. Your CRM platform has already responded to the customer and let them know a CMA is awaiting their review and gives them the ability to schedule a meeting with you. You're given an automated task through your CRM to review the CMA prior to the meeting, and the call with the prospect goes perfectly. You win the listing.

This is the future of real estate technology. Your website is automated. The home values are automated. The CMA is automated. You're empowered to go prospect more business and focus on winning more listings. The most exciting part about Delta Pitch, and the future of our AVM platform, is that the innovation never stops. We aren't a technology company that has built our entire company around a feature. The VMA and later AVM were just features that grew into full products of their own. We believe in all-in-one, so existing Delta Media Group partners don't have to pay extra for these features. And more importantly, unlike other automated home value products on the marketplace, your data is yours. Rest assured knowing Delta Media Group is never reselling your prospective seller's address or contact information to third-party mortgage companies.

Keep an eye out for more information about Delta Pitch, Delta's AVM product, and more in the coming months. More exciting automation is on the way.

Real estate technology is constantly evolving, with valuable new tools that can help agents better serve clients and run your business more efficiently behind the scenes. The most successful modern agents take advantage of the latest tools to make their lives easier, boost their business, and provide the best possible service for clients. So if you want modern agents, you need to have modern tools. Here are some key tools that you can use to help your agents modernize their habits and reach their full potential.

What Does It Mean to Be a Modern Agent?

If we have learned anything from the last couple of years, it's that being a modern agent means being prepared to adapt. Adapting to changes in technology, changes in how real estate business is transacted, changes in client habits, and changes in the wider world that impact the real estate industry. Embracing technology is the best way to adapt to all of those changes with confidence and stay up to date in the ever-evolving nature of the industry.

Changes in demographics, like the current trend of tech-savvy Millenials and Gen Z clients entering the real estate market for the first time, further stress the need to take advantage of the latest real estate technology. Modern agents are ready to serve clients in the ways that best fit their needs, and that means using real estate technology to make life easier for everyone involved.

Start with the Right Real Estate CRM

If you want to provide your agents with the best tools for the job, the right real estate CRM is the perfect place to start. Modern agents need access to reliable, accurate client data, marketing tools to generate new leads, and virtual tools that make it easier to conduct business in our modern world. DeltaNET®6 provides all of the tools that your agents need to serve their clients in one convenient package.

With DeltaNET®6, agents can easily manage relationships and generate new business. Take advantage of integrated email marketing, AI-driven newsletters, automated lead segmentation, and smart drip email campaigns to cultivate leads. Use SMS text messaging to stay in touch while making the most of virtual open houses and showings to accommodate modern clients. Track IDX search activity, integrate IDX listings, and track property searches to see what leads are searching for online.

And those are just some of the features that your agents will love when they dig into all that DeltaNET®6 has to offer.

Tap Into Your Artistic Side with Creative Studio

Modern agents wear many hats, which often means tapping into their creative side with things like listing brochures, flyers, email templates, and social media posts. Creative Studio makes it easy for agents to get creative, with accessible, easy-to-use graphic design tools that can give all of your marketing materials a professional shine. Easily design your own layouts, or use pre-designed templates to speed up the process while still getting great results.

Creative Studio also works well with DeltaNET®6, allowing you to quickly upload photos and listings directly from your CRM for a seamless design process. You can even store online versions of the materials that you create, have them sent to a print shop, and have the results delivered directly to your door.

Quickly Provide Accurate Valuations with Our AVM Report Platform

Business is booming in the real estate world, which is good news for real estate professionals but also presents some unique challenges. One of the biggest challenges that comes from a highly active real estate market is that there are major inventory shortages in many markets. Providing accurate valuations is always important, but especially so when inventory is so low compared to demand.

Our AVM Report Platform makes it quick and easy for agents to find the accurate valuation information they need, when they need it. They can easily catch up on the latest market conditions, quickly find the data that they need within the platform, and provide accurate estimates for clients from up to five independent sources. The reports that clients receive include multiple calls-to-action to generate conversions while providing them with the accurate, market-specific data that they value. It's all driven by AI, which helps the process automatically improve over time as it receives more data.

Help Your Agents Modernize Their Practices by Providing the Best Real Estate Technology

The bottom line: If your agents don't have the best tools for the job, now is the time to upgrade your real estate technology. The investment that you make in technology more than pays off with more efficient, modern agents and satisfied clients. From online marketing to relationship management and AVM, our team can provide your team with the tools that they need to thrive in the modern real estate industry. Contact us today to get started.

How many hours have you spent over the last year alone sifting through comps to price a client's home?

Now think: how many days have you spent engaged in this same tedious but very necessary process?

Local expertise is one of the most valuable things about your brand. But you know getting the most accurate and up-to-date information about your real estate market is no easy feat. It means sorting through information sources and putting it all together in a way that makes the answer obvious.

And if it doesn't get done quickly enough, you're back at square one!

Pricing a property is one of the most important services you provide. It makes the difference between smooth sailing to closing day and rough waters. The right price helps your customers compete even when market trends favor buyers over sellers. And, of course, it lets them get more value from their sale.

There is a solution that works for you and your customers: Automated Valuation Models.

Delta Media Group Puts World-Class AVM Within Reach for Your Real Estate Practice

You've probably already heard about AVM. Large agencies and brokerages are using it every single day.

With AVM, real estate professionals benefit from artificial intelligence that's always learning more, not only about your local market but about all the interconnected factors that influence the price of your housing stock. Crunching millions of data points, AI can find patterns invisible to human analysts.

What does this mean to you?

• Less effort spent gathering data so you can price properties – get vetted insights immediately

• Greater seller confidence because they can see that you're using a true best-in-class solution

• On average, faster time to closing and better final sale price for all of your motivated sellers

• More time in your workday to focus on the tasks that help you grow and scale your practice

Not too long ago, getting a license for an all-in-one AI-driven AVM center of excellence would cost thousands of dollars each and every year. Now, Delta Media Group is making it available to all DeltaNET subscribers. You have the opportunity to leverage dependable and stable artificial intelligence like never before.

With big names entering the real estate field, small and mid-sized practices are now empowered to excel.

DeltaNET AVM Puts You on a Level Playing Field with Your Large, Entrenched Competitors

At Delta Media Group, we believe every real estate professional deserves the opportunity to make a difference in the community. These days that means being equipped with the technology that's transforming the industry.

We've long made AVM available to our clients. Many have been using it as a supplemental resource. Now, after gathering feedback from thousands of agents and brokers around the country, we've raised it to the next level.

Here's a taste of what you get from our stable and dependable AVM solution:

• AVM Reporting You Can Use at a Glance
  Good AVM should be effortless. Our AVM platform not only turns raw data into insights but communicates them clearly and effectively. You and your clients will easily see exactly how to take action on what you discover.
  
  
• In-Depth Market Condition Reports
  Our hyper-specific market condition reports put you in touch with the pulse of your local community. Current activity is all in one place, including active listings, average days on market, closed sales, and months of supply.
  
  
• The Most Powerful AI-Driven AVM Valuation
  The machine learning behind DeltaNET AVM is many years in the making. Every hour of the day or night, it's learning more to serve you better. It receives data continuously and always shows accurate, timely information.
  
  
• Up to Five Valuations to Use as You See Fit
  Our platform synthesizes input from as much as five trusted sources – RPR, Collateral Analytics, Eppraisal, Zillow, and Delta's own in-house AI-driven calculation. It takes only seconds to determine the optimal value of any home.
  
  
• "Door Knock" Opportunities & Multiple Calls-to-Action
  Our system generates leads even when prospects fail to fill out all information. With calls-to-action throughout the experience, plus reports on how many users are looking for similar homes, there's a true sense of urgency.

Stop Using Pricey Third-Party Service and Bring AVM Home to Your Business

When many agencies and brokerages are looking for new ways to save money, DeltaNET AVM is a golden opportunity. You can simplify, streamline, and cut third-party expenses without compromising quality.

With real estate experts navigating record-low inventories, we know accurate valuation is crucial. To help you flourish in 2021 and beyond, we've re-engineered AVM from the ground up to integrate fully throughout the DeltaNET system. You're never more than a few clicks from AVM excellence.

It's easy to get started now. Contact us for the money-saving in-house AVM solution you've been waiting for.

The valuation of a home is essential to buyers and sellers alike. A property's valuation determines its taxes, influences insurance rates, and plays the biggest role in capping how much even the best-qualified buyers may borrow. For smooth financing, the valuation of a home must be established well in advance — and above all, it must be accurate.

In the past, it wasn't unusual for a professional appraiser to spend dozens of hours working on a single report. Sophisticated valuation processes apply to residential and commercial properties and must consider dozens of factors describing the market and neighborhood.

Sound valuation isn't just about today; it's also an informed projection of a property's future state. This is why, for example, home inspections that turn up problems with plumbing or wiring can have a devastating impact on the appraised value of the home and its financing until the problem is resolved.

Real estate agents are most familiar with the sales comparison method of property valuation. Here, the value of a property is determined with reference to similar local properties that sold recently. Depending on a home's amenities, it may be priced higher or slightly lower than the average.

In 2020, Delta Media Group made it easier than ever for brokerages to provide accurate and informative market intelligence to their clients. Our Recently Sold map enables would-be sellers to get an instant sense of relevant activity in their local market, helping them make informed decisions.

This map tool is part of our AVM (Automated Valuation Model) toolkit, a crucial feature in DeltaNET 6. AVM allows you to quickly and accurately determine property values — all while appealing to the natural curiosity sellers feel as they start to examine the market.

With new AI-driven features, this all-in-one valuation center of excellence is getting better and better.

Delta's AVM Platform Empowers You to Connect and Inform

Word-of-mouth and Fear of Missing Out are often major factors when sellers first start to explore the market. But anecdotes from friends and neighbors can lead them in the wrong direction. They need a clear picture of what's truly happening in their area — and a real estate expert like you to provide it.

Not that long ago, a relatively simple sales comparison in one neighborhood would take days: finding "comps," getting recent sales information, eliminating outliers, and more. With AVM, you can go beyond, harnessing the power of a machine learning engine that seamlessly examines thousands of data points.

Yes, thousands!

Delta Media Group's AVM Platform strives to be the most powerful in the real estate industry, putting you on an even footing with your large, established competitors. Our AVM Platform redefines the game with information your current and future customers can trust, direct from you as their local real estate expert.

In response to the pandemic, we've added features and expanded the most popular ones:

• More User-Friendly Interface
  The easier a piece of technology is to use, the more benefit you'll get from it. Using feedback from professionals like you, we refined the AVM report for superior scannability and data curation. You'll easily see residential market trends at a glance, including average property asking price.
  
  
• Hyper-Specific Market Data
  Your local insight is what differentiates you as a real estate expert. Our AVM Market Conditions section gives you all the deep details that once took days to uncover: active listings, average days on the market, closed sales, and months of supply. You'll never miss a beat in your neighborhood.
  
  
• Constantly Evolving AVM Response
  Ours is the only AVM artificial intelligence tool on the market that's always growing and improving. Every time there's a sale, purchase, or listing update of any kind, it learns more and more. This groundbreaking AI is truly self-learning, so you can pass on the most useful advice to your clients.
  
  
• Complete Workflow Integration
  We've re-engineered how the AVM process works behind the scenes to ensure a fully integrated experience for the most common real estate workflows. In particular, we have upgraded our AVM to deliver unbeatable results when used in conjunction with DeltaNET 6's robust comparative market analysis capabilities.
  
  
• Excellence at Lower Costs
  If your goal is to reduce redundancies and save money on third-party providers, the DeltaNET 6 AVM is the right move for you. Our tools are aligned with your business requirements, allowing individuals and teams to do more than ever before without adding overhead.

The real estate market moves fast, and a comparative analysis process that takes days could give sellers the wrong impression. With the DeltaNET 6 AVM, you and your clients will always have the best, most accurate, and most comprehensive real estate data for all your pricing needs.

Contact us today to find out more or get started.

As 2020 comes to a close, few would have guessed that the pandemic would trigger a substantial increase in the demand for housing. Despite negative impacts in almost every industry, real estate markets in many regions of the country are seeing increased average listing prices, increased average sale prices, and lower days on market at rates even above the previous year. 

Unfortunately, this boom in buying has also created a tighter inventory in most markets. While this boom won't last forever, experts and analysts alike are projecting that 2021 will see a continuation of this buying demand for at least the first few months. With a tight inventory, it's up to real estate agents to find creative yet effective ways of capturing more listings.

For years, the diverse team at Delta Media Group has worked diligently to provide agents with the best advice, tools, and resources available. Most of our clients have used our AVM Platform on their websites as a supplementary resource for securing listings. However, the challenges presented by 2020 have made this AVM platform a vital tool. We've listened to your evolving needs and are pleased to release major updates to the AVM platform that will directly impact your success.

Major Updates to Delta Media Group AVM Platform

• A complete redesign of the AVM report. Clean, clear, and curated to your needs, our redesigned AVM report makes it effortless to quickly scan and secure the data you need including average property asking price, registered buyers by zip code, and residential market trends.
  
  
• An addition of the Market Conditions section. Looking for hyper-specific data on a particular market? The Market Conditions section covers all current activity in the market, including active listings, average days on market, number of closed sales, and months of supply. 
  
  
• A new AVM valuation. Applying AI (Artificial Intelligence) to our AVM valuation will enable it to become "self-learning" as it receives data and automatically improve over time.
  
  
• A deeply-integrated AVM process. We understand how vital AVM processes are with record low inventories in markets. We've addressed these industry needs by creating a more deeply integrated AVM. 
  
  
• Full integration of AVM with CMA. Our new DeltaNET6 CMA will be fully integrated into our new AVM. Launching this month, the AVM will drive CMA automations. (Coming in early 2021)
  
  
• Acute AVM solutions that save you money. We've listened to our enterprise clients and understand that relying on third-party providers is not fiscally possible anymore. Our AVM is fully integrated to address your business requirements and streamline expenses, ultimately saving you money. 

Though inventory is tighter, the team at Delta Media Group is determined to help you increase your listings in this buying boom. Our newest updates to the AVM platform, including the upcoming full integration into our DeltaNET 6 CMA, will help you overcome these hurdles and achieve your goals now and long into the future.

See what the new report looks like on both desktop and mobile views.

Be ready to ace your next listing presentation with a DeltaNET AVM Report perfect for reverse prospecting. In this week's episode of Tech Tuesday, Harley Wolfarth shows how you can use Delta Media Group's AVM Reporting system to get started.

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