Change the question
Nearly 20 years ago, automated online home appraisals became available to anyone. That immediacy quickly became an expectation built into the process, and the value proposition hasn't changed since. You pick a home search site, enter an address, and the market price is displayed. Branded algorithms match location-based price trends and square footage. You're then presented with a ballpark estimate, with the inevitable response: “Why is my house worth so little?” or “Why is that house worth so much?” and “What do I do next?”
Driven by the statistical uncertainty of existing solutions, we discovered a way to answer these questions by reinventing the home appraisal experience. We call it StyleExplorer. It combines a standard appraisal (size and location) with intelligent image data of all the attributes that contribute to a home's true value. The new value proposition is confidence, control, and guidance to understand the optimal valuation of your home, whether you're selling, renovating, or buying. The new approach changes questions from “how” the valuation was calculated to “what does it mean” and “what can you do with it?”
Let's do new math
It's a simple theorem: the sum of the rooms is greater than the whole (the house).
Purlin's StyleExplorer image intelligence allows for side-by-side comparison of a home's individual assets, such as architectural style, rooms, backyards, and neighborhoods. For buyers, it's a unique experience akin to flocking to multiple open houses at once. For sellers, comparing homes with similar market valuations reveals valuation gaps and opportunities. Some valuations fall short of the home's salient features (valuation boost) while others don't look as good as they should (room for improvement). These instant insights are invaluable to the seller and agent nurturing process. This is truly the automated love affair of open houses and MVP (market value pricing analysis).
Imagine you're getting ready to remodel. You want to keep up with the latest in design and furniture (and the Joneses), or you just want some inspiration. Looking at catalogs is helpful, but they feel staged, if not inaccessible. What if you could peer into the rooms people live in in real life and see what your contemporaries are up to in their homes? Imagine peering into your neighbor's living room, backyard, or hideaway. This technology was built specifically for remodelers, too.
Make it a place to live, not a property to buy
It explores the interiors and surroundings of the home, leverages the owner’s chosen design touches in photos, past and imagined experiences, and makes the calculation of a crude monetary value of a property seem irrelevant and even arbitrary. It humanizes home valuation by dimensionalizing it, and gets to what a home’s value really means from an individual’s perspective. This unconscious shift from left brain to right brain makes a listed property a place to live in, not a property to buy. Traditional automated valuation solutions ignore that for such a big and important purchase that goes beyond basic requirements, emotional value almost always trumps rational appeal. Emotional value can encourage a buyer to prefer one home over another, even if there is a price difference. It is the emotional response to an image-based immersion, not clever words or negotiation techniques, that motivates the buyer.
Take it to 11
Without your permission, the world is thinking what your home is worth, and you have no control over whether it's spot on, a bit of a stretch, or completely underpriced.
Purlin's image intelligence gives you back control, provides guidance, and perhaps most importantly, gives you confidence. It exposes misrepresentations and resets your home's value with evidence-based strengths (pictures don't lie, especially when viewed side-by-side). It gives you evidence of weaknesses and strengths, what you need, what's possible, and what really means. Sellers are smarter and happier because they have a clear understanding of the value of what they're selling, and know what to show and how to prepare it. Buyers are able to explore and understand (and love) the possibilities of what they can buy. Renovators are able to learn the best ways to improve their home.
Our new vision for home valuation based on image intelligence advances a fundamental belief about home valuation: Home valuations provide context, not evidence. The sum of the room and the future experience in the room is often higher than an uninspected valuation. This can increase the value of your home by 11 times.