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Looking to buy a home? It’s better to be on a “Way” than a “Street,”
pick a female real-estate agent and try to be close to a Starbucks.
That’s the advice of Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Zillow.com, who
collected statistics from his site’s database of 110 million homes to
find trends in real-estate pricing. Along with Zillow economist Stan
Humphries, he has written “The New Rules of Real Estate” (Grand
Central), out Tuesday. Some of his findings:
- The Starbucks effect. Take two identical homes sold in 1997. One
near Starbucks would have sold for an average of $137,000, while the
same home without a Starbucks would have sold for $102,000. Fast-forward
15 years: the average US home appreciated 65 percent to $168,000, but
the property next to Starbucks skyrockets 96 percent to $269,000.
- All renovations are not created equal. The greatest return for your
investment is a mid-range bathroom remodel, a $3,000 job that returns
$1.71 for every dollar spent. The worst home improvements for value are
kitchen remodeling and finishing a basement. A top-of-the-line kitchen
reno will cost you $22,000, and you’ll only get about $0.51 back for
every $1 you spend.
- Use the right words in a listing. Avoid “unique,” “TLC,”
“investment” and “potential” — these could lower sale prices by as much
as 7 percent. But words like “luxurious” for bottom-tier homes and
“captivating” for top-tier homes could add 8.2 percent to your home’s
value. Longer, more-detailed listings often sell for more.
- “When” is as important as “how much.” In New York, the worst time to
sell is the second week of December (listings sold for 2.8 percent less
than average). The best time is March, when homes sold faster and for 2
percent more.
- Seven is an unlucky number. Homes with “777” as their address sell
for 2.1 percent less than their estimated value; house numbers that just
include 777 (such as 17779 Main St.), sell for 1.8 percent less. Oddly,
houses with just 7 as their number sell for 1.8 percent more than the
estimated sale price.
- Psychological pricing works. Listings with a nine in the thousand
digit ($450,000 vs. $449,000) sell anywhere from four days to a full
week faster.
- Female agents tend to sell homes faster and for higher prices.
- What’s in a name? A lot of cash, according to Zillow’s data. Homes
on named streets tend to be 2 percent more valuable nationwide than
numbered ones (unless you’re talking about New York City, where it’s a
wash). But Main Street homes garner 4 percent less than America’s median
home value. Street names with Lake or Sunset will sell upwards of 16
percent higher. Suffixes also matter. Avoid “Street,” which has the
lowest home values of $183,120 nationally, and find a “Way,” which has
the highest home values averaging around $312,000.
