SmartZip pinpoints hot homes in US foreclosure market
Engineers at newly-launched SmartZip.com crafted software to rate the appreciation potential of homes by analyzing job trends, population growth, crime statistics, school districts, real estate price patterns and more.
The result is a simple scoring system people can rely on when trying to figure out which homes in the foreclosure market are shrewd buys and which are long-term duds, SmartZip chief executive Tom Glassanos told AFP.
"What we do is boil all the complex information down into a single number we call the 'SmartZip Score'," Glassanos said.
"Our goal here is to help people make intelligent, fast decisions so they can ultimately be competitive in taking advantage of opportunities."
SmartZip rated all 15 million homes in foreclosure in California and Florida, giving each a score from 1 to 100.
Properties scoring 65 or higher are expected to outperform the overall housing market while those scoring 35 or less will likely underperform, according to SmartZip.
Properties rated in the mid-range should roughly track the overall housing market.
A Florida foreclosure priced at 57,040 dollars (US) was listed on Tuesday as the bargain at SmartZip.com, which calculated that the 3-bedroom house could yield a 909 percent return-on-investment during the next 10 years....MORE
Here's the site.
From CNBC:
US Housing Market Could Be Facing Another Bubble: Shiller
The housing market, which already has been battered by the worst collapse since the Great Depression, could be setting itself for another bubble, well-known economist Robert Shiller told CNBC.With home affordability at a 40-year high, there is "absolutley" a possibility that the housing market will face another bubble in the next five years, said Shiller, an economics professor at Yale, co-founder of MacroMarkets and co-developer of the monthly Case-Shiller home price index.
"The low interest rates, the affordability is leaning that way and the ratios are back down," Shiller said in a live interview. "I get glimmers of excitement among some people, but we still have a high inventory of unsold homes, and we still have a lot of weariness because of the recent experience.">>>MORE
