For Arrian Binnings, a REALTOR® with Pacific Union Real Estate in San Francisco, Calif., tracking his local market to see what types of changes are occurring is a daily task that can’t be ignored. While open house traffic and information shared among colleagues is easy to come by, Binnings’ partnership with HouseCanary has opened his eyes even further, providing him with the ability to look at the market in a whole new way.
“Having built the most comprehensive real estate dataset in the marketplace, HouseCanary’s data infrastructure aggregates thousands of data elements from a broad set of data sources. Tracking the most specific details about a given property, the broadest economic factors—and everything in between—HouseCanary is preparing real estate professionals for the future with great data and predictive tools alike.
“What HouseCanary is doing is something I’ve never seen before,” says Binnings. “They’re adding a lot of value to my daily work of being able to use data for market projections.”
Fitting into his daily workflow, HouseCanary is bringing to the table data Binnings wouldn’t be able to collect on his own. “On an individual property level, having a source where I can pull data and look at not just data about the property, but projections and forecasts for the market area, in addition to zip code- and census-level data, is truly unique,” says Binnings.
But it doesn’t end there. “The level of data and forecasting for small pockets is very valuable, as it helps me with micro-level analysis, which can then be expanded out to the greater neighborhood zip code, city and metro market level,” says Binnings. “HouseCanary provides a different view into the data, no matter which level you want to use to analyze the market.”
With so much data at his disposal, Binnings goes on to explain that HouseCanary’s comps analysis tool has proven to be a true game-changer.
“By drilling down into raw market movement, HouseCanary has eliminated one of the major obstacles to pulling comps,” says Binnings. While comps that are older than six months are typically tossed out due to data that’s no longer relevant, HouseCanary has uniquely sidestepped this obstacle by paying attention to market appreciation, allowing the price of a comp to be adjusted to the tune of today’s market reality. “This is a huge differentiator, as it’s opened my eyes to other comps I wouldn’t normally consider.”
While the comps resonate most with Binnings, data related to where properties sit on the bell curve within a specific market area—in addition to the platform’s ability to forecast into the future—are most beneficial for his clients.
“When I present clients with all this data, they’re very impressed,” says Binnings. Taking a hands-on approach to walking clients through the data he’s compiled for them, Binnings is able to paint a clear picture as to where the market currently stands—and where it’s headed. “I simply take the data HouseCanary has and marry it with the narrative I want/need to tell based on the specific property. It augments what I’m already doing,” adds Binnings.
A big believer in the fact that understanding the value of a home is a real estate professional’s No. 1 advantage, Binnings believes that using HouseCanary as a tool to help both himself and his clients understand value and trends is ultimately what the product is all about.
“No one has a crystal ball, and real estate professionals are going to continue dodging questions when it comes to predicting the market,” concludes Binnings. “But with HouseCanary, we have another place to point the finger to show that this isn’t just REALTOR® rhetoric.”
For more information, please visit www.housecanary.com/ris.
Paige Tepping is RISMedia’s managing editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at paige@rismedia.com.
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