Laroia & Company

Buying or selling real estate involves change and change is always stressful. There are many reasons why people decide to move and sell their real estate or make new brick and mortar investments. It is important for all parties involved to understand the motivators driving a transaction. Without such an understanding, the likelihood of successfully closing on an offer is lessened.	In recent years, consumer oriented real estate websites have begun offering free electronic Competitive Market Analyses (CMAs) to prospective buyers and sellers searching for information on the internet. It is important to remember that such CMAs are generated using an algorithm and presented to the user without any human review and interpretation.
	The median error for estimated home values on such websites can be as high as 10% (by their own admission). This means that values of 50% of homes in the search results are within 10% of their actual market value and values of the remaining 50% of homes are off by more than 10% of their actual market value. Lacking accuracy, such estimated values, in many instances, create wrong expectations in the minds of buyers and sellers. In other words, based on the data from such consumer sites, buyers and sellers perceive property values to be higher or lower than actual market values of homes in the selected neighborhoods. Laroia & Company assists clients to convert available consumer data into knowledge, in addition to providing independent valuations of commercial properties including tax implications of such investments.
San Francisco . Boston . New Delhi