Redfin sudden decrease of 25%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They probably changed the formula to create the estimate.

+1. Our estimate (in MOCO) kept increasing way beyond what I think was even remotely possible. Their algorithm definitely needed some tweaks.

[Anonymous]

Funny my DC home just had an increase of 10%. I bought 3 years ago.

[Anonymous]

I'm not a moco troll (live in dc) but I do notice that friends who would have moved to bethesda move to Au park or similar now because the upper nw schools are on the upswing, shorter commute, more appreciation, etc. Moco does have some legitimate issues from non-trolls

[Anonymous]

Redfin shows our estimate price to be $15K BELOW what we paid in 2017. However, we just refinanced and the bank appraised us at $85K higher than our purchase price.

Don't believe the Redfin algorithms. It doesn't account for condition of the home or amenities - tear down vs. newly remodeled by the last owner, finished vs. unfinished basement, degree of flipper activity in the area, etc. It just looks at the tax records for square footage, # of beds and baths, and recent sales prices.

[Anonymous]

I'm guessing that OP bought in MOCO too probably somewhere in Potomac, Bethesda, or Rockville as there really are not any 1.5M houses on the eastern side and very few in the up county area. I don't think MOCO has dropped 25% in the higher end market over the past few years but it is very possible that you did pay 10%-20% more for your house than what comps are selling for more, especially if there is more inventory in your neighborhood now.

The over 1M market is very difficult in MOCO. A realtor friend told me that it is like fishing in a lake without many fish. If you are not going to drop your price substantially then you will need to wait and wait to find the right buyer -which basically means getting lucky. Sellers with houses over 1M usually have the funds to carry the house for many months and some sellers simply try to sell their house for a few years. It is not uncommon in MOCO to see a 1.5 M house be listed and delisted with price drops in the several hundred thousand range for 2 or more years. What seems to be changing is that more of these sellers just want to finally get rid of the house so they are taking offers at 200K-300K less then their initial asking price. If a few of these houses sell near you, they will drop the Redfin estimates and since they are legitimate comps they would drop your appraisal if you went to refinance.

There are other possibilities that do not necessarily mean a 25% decline in your property values. Estimates factor in price per square foot and in areas with houses ranging from 1200 sq ft to 5000 sq ft these can throw things off. If you live in an area that has smaller houses but you have a larger house, the chances are higher that your estimate will rise above what you can sell your house for on the market. If you have a smaller house and very large houses are being sold then your estimate can fall down quickly below what you could sell it for on the market. Realtors are getting really bad at lying about square footage, including unfinished basements and other shenanigans so your house may be correctly listed at 40000 sq ft while a similar sized houses is listed at 6000 square feet. If that 6K house sells for less than what you paid for it then your estimate will drop significantly because the price per square foot has gone down so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm guessing that OP bought in MOCO too probably somewhere in Potomac, Bethesda, or Rockville as there really are not any 1.5M houses on the eastern side and very few in the up county area. I don't think MOCO has dropped 25% in the higher end market over the past few years but it is very possible that you did pay 10%-20% more for your house than what comps are selling for more, especially if there is more inventory in your neighborhood now.

The over 1M market is very difficult in MOCO. A realtor friend told me that it is like fishing in a lake without many fish. If you are not going to drop your price substantially then you will need to wait and wait to find the right buyer -which basically means getting lucky. Sellers with houses over 1M usually have the funds to carry the house for many months and some sellers simply try to sell their house for a few years. It is not uncommon in MOCO to see a 1.5 M house be listed and delisted with price drops in the several hundred thousand range for 2 or more years. What seems to be changing is that more of these sellers just want to finally get rid of the house so they are taking offers at 200K-300K less then their initial asking price. If a few of these houses sell near you, they will drop the Redfin estimates and since they are legitimate comps they would drop your appraisal if you went to refinance.

There are other possibilities that do not necessarily mean a 25% decline in your property values. Estimates factor in price per square foot and in areas with houses ranging from 1200 sq ft to 5000 sq ft these can throw things off. If you live in an area that has smaller houses but you have a larger house, the chances are higher that your estimate will rise above what you can sell your house for on the market. If you have a smaller house and very large houses are being sold then your estimate can fall down quickly below what you could sell it for on the market. Realtors are getting really bad at lying about square footage, including unfinished basements and other shenanigans so your house may be correctly listed at 40000 sq ft while a similar sized houses is listed at 6000 square feet. If that 6K house sells for less than what you paid for it then your estimate will drop significantly because the price per square foot has gone down so much.

+1 MOCO is not economically vibrant like Virginia is. Anyone that can afford million dollar homes is either in Virginia or thinking about moving to Virginia because that’s where they work. What used to be high end MOCO like Potomac is headed down down down. MOCO is for the lower middle class only now.

[Anonymous]

Redfin had our house at a bit over 1M when we put it on the market a few months ago. It quickly sold for almost 1.4.

Oh, and we're in MoCo.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm guessing that OP bought in MOCO too probably somewhere in Potomac, Bethesda, or Rockville as there really are not any 1.5M houses on the eastern side and very few in the up county area. I don't think MOCO has dropped 25% in the higher end market over the past few years but it is very possible that you did pay 10%-20% more for your house than what comps are selling for more, especially if there is more inventory in your neighborhood now.

The over 1M market is very difficult in MOCO. A realtor friend told me that it is like fishing in a lake without many fish. If you are not going to drop your price substantially then you will need to wait and wait to find the right buyer -which basically means getting lucky. Sellers with houses over 1M usually have the funds to carry the house for many months and some sellers simply try to sell their house for a few years. It is not uncommon in MOCO to see a 1.5 M house be listed and delisted with price drops in the several hundred thousand range for 2 or more years. What seems to be changing is that more of these sellers just want to finally get rid of the house so they are taking offers at 200K-300K less then their initial asking price. If a few of these houses sell near you, they will drop the Redfin estimates and since they are legitimate comps they would drop your appraisal if you went to refinance.

There are other possibilities that do not necessarily mean a 25% decline in your property values. Estimates factor in price per square foot and in areas with houses ranging from 1200 sq ft to 5000 sq ft these can throw things off. If you live in an area that has smaller houses but you have a larger house, the chances are higher that your estimate will rise above what you can sell your house for on the market. If you have a smaller house and very large houses are being sold then your estimate can fall down quickly below what you could sell it for on the market. Realtors are getting really bad at lying about square footage, including unfinished basements and other shenanigans so your house may be correctly listed at 40000 sq ft while a similar sized houses is listed at 6000 square feet. If that 6K house sells for less than what you paid for it then your estimate will drop significantly because the price per square foot has gone down so much.

+1 MOCO is not economically vibrant like Virginia is. Anyone that can afford million dollar homes is either in Virginia or thinking about moving to Virginia because that’s where they work. What used to be high end MOCO like Potomac is headed down down down. MOCO is for the lower middle class only now.

Lol what is your definition of lower middle class? Because our HHI is 200k+, both live and work in MoCo and we definitely can't afford most of what is available in our desired locations in the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm guessing that OP bought in MOCO too probably somewhere in Potomac, Bethesda, or Rockville as there really are not any 1.5M houses on the eastern side and very few in the up county area. I don't think MOCO has dropped 25% in the higher end market over the past few years but it is very possible that you did pay 10%-20% more for your house than what comps are selling for more, especially if there is more inventory in your neighborhood now.

The over 1M market is very difficult in MOCO. A realtor friend told me that it is like fishing in a lake without many fish. If you are not going to drop your price substantially then you will need to wait and wait to find the right buyer -which basically means getting lucky. Sellers with houses over 1M usually have the funds to carry the house for many months and some sellers simply try to sell their house for a few years. It is not uncommon in MOCO to see a 1.5 M house be listed and delisted with price drops in the several hundred thousand range for 2 or more years. What seems to be changing is that more of these sellers just want to finally get rid of the house so they are taking offers at 200K-300K less then their initial asking price. If a few of these houses sell near you, they will drop the Redfin estimates and since they are legitimate comps they would drop your appraisal if you went to refinance.

There are other possibilities that do not necessarily mean a 25% decline in your property values. Estimates factor in price per square foot and in areas with houses ranging from 1200 sq ft to 5000 sq ft these can throw things off. If you live in an area that has smaller houses but you have a larger house, the chances are higher that your estimate will rise above what you can sell your house for on the market. If you have a smaller house and very large houses are being sold then your estimate can fall down quickly below what you could sell it for on the market. Realtors are getting really bad at lying about square footage, including unfinished basements and other shenanigans so your house may be correctly listed at 40000 sq ft while a similar sized houses is listed at 6000 square feet. If that 6K house sells for less than what you paid for it then your estimate will drop significantly because the price per square foot has gone down so much.

+1 MOCO is not economically vibrant like Virginia is. Anyone that can afford million dollar homes is either in Virginia or thinking about moving to Virginia because that’s where they work. What used to be high end MOCO like Potomac is headed down down down. MOCO is for the lower middle class only now.

The OP didn't even bring up MoCo. What are you two talking about?

And anyone who can afford a $1M house isn't middle class, they're making more than $300k to $400k. That's rich in most people's books.

Fact is that if you have a budget of $400,000 to $900,000 (middle class and upper middle class by area standards), you get much more bang for your buck in MoCo than in NoVA. You can get a SFH half a mile from DC, 1 1/2 miles from Metro and all the shopping in Bethesda and in a 8/10 school district for $899,000 in Chevy Chase. There is nothing this nice, this close to DC and Metro, for this kind of price in VA.

https://www.redfin.com/MD/Chevy-Chase/7507-Brookville-Rd-20815/home/10652733

Lol what is your definition of lower middle class? Because our HHI is 200k+, both live and work in MoCo and we definitely can't afford most of what is available in our desired locations in the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm guessing that OP bought in MOCO too probably somewhere in Potomac, Bethesda, or Rockville as there really are not any 1.5M houses on the eastern side and very few in the up county area. I don't think MOCO has dropped 25% in the higher end market over the past few years but it is very possible that you did pay 10%-20% more for your house than what comps are selling for more, especially if there is more inventory in your neighborhood now.

The over 1M market is very difficult in MOCO. A realtor friend told me that it is like fishing in a lake without many fish. If you are not going to drop your price substantially then you will need to wait and wait to find the right buyer -which basically means getting lucky. Sellers with houses over 1M usually have the funds to carry the house for many months and some sellers simply try to sell their house for a few years. It is not uncommon in MOCO to see a 1.5 M house be listed and delisted with price drops in the several hundred thousand range for 2 or more years. What seems to be changing is that more of these sellers just want to finally get rid of the house so they are taking offers at 200K-300K less then their initial asking price. If a few of these houses sell near you, they will drop the Redfin estimates and since they are legitimate comps they would drop your appraisal if you went to refinance.

There are other possibilities that do not necessarily mean a 25% decline in your property values. Estimates factor in price per square foot and in areas with houses ranging from 1200 sq ft to 5000 sq ft these can throw things off. If you live in an area that has smaller houses but you have a larger house, the chances are higher that your estimate will rise above what you can sell your house for on the market. If you have a smaller house and very large houses are being sold then your estimate can fall down quickly below what you could sell it for on the market. Realtors are getting really bad at lying about square footage, including unfinished basements and other shenanigans so your house may be correctly listed at 40000 sq ft while a similar sized houses is listed at 6000 square feet. If that 6K house sells for less than what you paid for it then your estimate will drop significantly because the price per square foot has gone down so much.

+1 MOCO is not economically vibrant like Virginia is. Anyone that can afford million dollar homes is either in Virginia or thinking about moving to Virginia because that’s where they work. What used to be high end MOCO like Potomac is headed down down down. MOCO is for the lower middle class only now.

The OP didn't even bring up MoCo. What are you two talking about?

And anyone who can afford a $1M house isn't middle class, they're making more than $300k to $400k. That's rich in most people's books.

Fact is that if you have a budget of $400,000 to $900,000 (middle class and upper middle class by area standards), you get much more bang for your buck in MoCo than in NoVA. You can get a SFH half a mile from DC, 1 1/2 miles from Metro and all the shopping in Bethesda and in a 8/10 school district for $899,000 in Chevy Chase. There is nothing this nice, this close to DC and Metro, for this kind of price in VA.

https://www.redfin.com/MD/Chevy-Chase/7507-Brookville-Rd-20815/home/10652733

[Anonymous]

MOCO needs to stop building 1M+ new construction. There is a surplus of older 1M homes and no where near enough buyers to absorb these let alone all the new 1+M homes going up. There is a large market of buyers for smaller houses under 600K but developers are going for higher profit margins and simply taking a cut when they all do not sell.

MOCO used to attract the out of town buyers who were relocating from high priced markets but those buyers are all going to VA. If MOCO had gotten Amazon and more west coast transplants then the 1M+ market would be doing well because for those buyers anything under 2M is cheap. The west coast people are all landing in VA or DC now.

[Anonymous]

Fact is that if you have a budget of $400,000 to $900,000 (middle class and upper middle class by area standards), you get much more bang for your buck in MoCo than in NoVA. You can get a SFH half a mile from DC, 1 1/2 miles from Metro and all the shopping in Bethesda and in a 8/10 school district for $899,000 in Chevy Chase. There is nothing this nice, this close to DC and Metro, for this kind of price in VA.

There is always a reason why something is cheaper. MOCO is simply not as desirable as NOVA so it is cheaper. If you are getting more "bang for your buck" you are giving up on future appreciation. You are also taking a big risk on those 8/10 schools which are right on the border of some of the lowest performing schools in the DMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Fact is that if you have a budget of $400,000 to $900,000 (middle class and upper middle class by area standards), you get much more bang for your buck in MoCo than in NoVA. You can get a SFH half a mile from DC, 1 1/2 miles from Metro and all the shopping in Bethesda and in a 8/10 school district for $899,000 in Chevy Chase. There is nothing this nice, this close to DC and Metro, for this kind of price in VA.

There is always a reason why something is cheaper. MOCO is simply not as desirable as NOVA so it is cheaper. If you are getting more "bang for your buck" you are giving up on future appreciation. You are also taking a big risk on those 8/10 schools which are right on the border of some of the lowest performing schools in the DMV.

On the border of a school that's lower performing than TC Williams and Wakefield, which are 2/10 and 3/10 respectively? Do tell what this school is...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Fact is that if you have a budget of $400,000 to $900,000 (middle class and upper middle class by area standards), you get much more bang for your buck in MoCo than in NoVA. You can get a SFH half a mile from DC, 1 1/2 miles from Metro and all the shopping in Bethesda and in a 8/10 school district for $899,000 in Chevy Chase. There is nothing this nice, this close to DC and Metro, for this kind of price in VA.

There is always a reason why something is cheaper. MOCO is simply not as desirable as NOVA so it is cheaper. If you are getting more "bang for your buck" you are giving up on future appreciation. You are also taking a big risk on those 8/10 schools which are right on the border of some of the lowest performing schools in the DMV.

One reason why the homes in VA are more expensive is that there were more tear downs in close-in VA than close-in MoCo. Homes in places like Chevy Chase and Bethesda were always expensive, whereas 1,200 sq ft bungalows in Crystal City and Clarendon could be bought for around $100,000 in the 90s (when you couldn't get a home in Chevy Chase for less than $500,000). When you tear everything down and have no regulations on what you can build, you get a glut of $1.5M craftsman McMansions, which makes prices go up. NoVA has been playing catch-up with places like Chevy Chase and Bethesda since the 80s.

"Middle class" people can't afford $1.5M homes, and are priced out of Arlington and McLean. The only places for "middle class" people in VA are either in horrible 2/10 school districts or 1 1/4+ commutes to DC in rush hour. You can still get walkable places with good schools and a much less stressful commute to DC in MD for $850,000 to $900,000 and less. $750,000 in Arlington in a 6/10 school district will get you this:

https://www.redfin.com/VA/Arlington/2411-John-Marshall-Dr-22207/home/11225837

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a moco troll (live in dc) but I do notice that friends who would have moved to bethesda move to Au park or similar now because the upper nw schools are on the upswing, shorter commute, more appreciation, etc. Moco does have some legitimate issues from non-trolls

Close-in DC will always appreciate more than anywhere further out, whether its in VA or MD.