Facebook
X
Pinterest
Copy Link
If you haven’t heard, another real estate agent has been murdered. 27 year old Ashley Oakland was shot twice while at a model townhome in West Des Moines, Iowa. Her company, Iowa Realty, has suspended all open houses.
This tragedy sickens me as a father, as a broker, and as a human being. Here is, from everything I have read, a beautiful, upbeat, well regarded person out trying to earn a living who was brutally murdered on the job. And it wasn’t at some vacant cabin out in the woods out of town, or some secluded place. It was in the middle of a townhome community that appeared to have from the reports at least some units occupied.
I was once physically attacked in a home by an unbalanced client. Another colleague was beaten in his own office so brutally he required minor plastic surgery. I know what it is like to be with someone who crosses the line of civility into physical hostility. I know the feeling in the stomach when you see and hear things that don’t match normal behavior. But I don’t know what it is like to look down the barrel of a gun. I cannot imagine what this poor woman’s final moments were like.
Some murderer stole her life from her. Most of us reading this have been 27. For me it was over 16 years ago. I had quite a bit to look forward to. And someone stole it from her, probably exploiting the fact that she was trying to earn an honest living and would be vulnerable. We don’t sit at big desks shifting money around, taking an easy cut. We work harder for our living than most of the public understands.
To Ashley’s co workers and loved ones especially, my heart aches. All of our hearts ache.
To my colleagues, I say, yet again, for God’s sake be careful out there. There are people who don’t understand the hazards we face. We meet strangers in strange places for a living. This has happened before. It will probably happen again. And there is no weapon, spray or martial arts class we can arm ourselves with if someone means us harm. A turn of the head may be the last, because they don’t announce the attack. It happens in a blink.
Document all showings and always get a name and number. I hope they catch the murderer quickly, either with phone records, Ashley’s calender or Outlook, or handwritten notes. I hope they catch this monster and bring it to justice.
But in the meantime, please PLEASE PLEASE be careful, especially in the aftermath when copycats lick their chops.
With millions of homes having been lost to foreclosure and millions more to come, savvy “investors” may purchase some of the best deals with the intention of turning them for a quick profit. 
Wednesday’s Journal News has a front page story on 
The Ultimate Answer to the Zillow Zestimate
Perhaps no phenomenon in real estate is as much of a lightning rod for strong opinions as the Zillow Zestimate. Most agents I speak with hate it; I have had instances where looking it up has helped a deal and I have had clients walk from a deal because of it. The Zillow Zestimate has been the reason for sellers to feel under-priced or under-bid, and it has been invoked by buyers as the reason that they feel they overbid on a home. I once got so exasperated that I asked a client if a Zestimate ever drove them around Westchester County like I did when they used it to justify an unrealistic offer.
As you might guess, I have never associated the Zestimate with the easy button.
Yet today, I had an epiphany about the Zestimate with the great help of Zillow’s outreach manager, Brad Andersohn. Brad’s stature in my eyes is impossible to compromise; his credibility is beyond questioning. The Zestimate, Brad said as he spoke to a group of colleagues, is a starting point. Not an ending point.
Allow me to back up just a moment. Zillow’s own disclosure on their front page about Zestimate accuracy is surprisingly candid. In my own New York market, the average margin of error of the Zillow Zestimate is 11.6%. They aren’t trying to be something they are not.
Back to Brad- If the Zestimate is the starting point, he said, the licensed professional is the “Zactimate.” What a way of putting it.
It makes sense. There is no valuation algorithm that can smell a pet or recognize 1970 wood panelling in the living room. There is no formula to judge good or bad staging, a neighbor’s yard with a car on blocks, or a rehab job that transforms a ho-hum place into a palace. Indeed, a Zestimate cannot drive the client around in its car, and it is exactly what Brad says: a starting point.
The final word, the best source of predicting how the market will behave about a property is a living, breathing experienced licensee on the ground who can walk in the living room and look out the window. The Zestimate is an estimate. Period. It doesn’t live, work, drive through, or close deals in Westchester County. That’s what I do. As a broker who can sit at your kitchen table with my laptop logged onto the MLS and speak with authority on the town’s market activity (homes I myself often walked through and even sold myself), I am the Zactimate. In this context, there is peace at the water hole. I thank Brad for stating it so eloquently.