Typos, damn typos, and statistics!

Hello all you real estate artists out there!  I wanted to write a quick blog post to tell you about a couple errors/typos we found in the book.  As a first time authors we must have proof-read the book about twenty times and then had members of our family proofread as well, but a couple things got missed.  One is very small the other is more problematic.

On page 73, one of our readers, Gina Teutsch, noticed a typo, the paragraph that speaks about "Lot size and condition", the last sentence says, "...may be attractive to sellers."  That should read "...may be attractive to buyers."  Thanks Gina!

Another reader, Manny Fajardo, noticed something more significant, also in Chapter 3, The Art of Pricing Homes.  I mention in the book several times that you always want to make adjustments to the comparable properties, not the subject property itself.  Manny noticed in the section where I was speaking to working with assigned values the chart on page 85, seemed to break this rule.

Here's what the chart currently looks like:

Here's the problem, above the chart two bullet points state:

  • When a feature is present, we add its assigned value to our estimate.
  • When the feature is missing, we subtract the assigned values.

The words, "add" and "subtract" are reversed.  It was a typo in these bullet points that caused confusion that led to the chart being rendered incorrectly.  Also, I don't think the bullet points are clear enough, so I'm rewriting them to read:

  • If the comp includes a feature the subject property does not have, like a pool, or an increase in features, such as an additional bedroom, then we subtract the assigned value of the feature from the price of the comp.
  • If the comp does not include a feature the subject property has, like a pool, or a decrease in features, such as one less bedroom, then we add the assigned value of the feature to the price of the comp.

 

 

This means we are going to make these corrections to the chart itself.

These changes will be reflected in the next print run of the book.  Many thanks to Gina and Manny for spotting these errors!

 

1 comment

  • I just read your book and I found that error about adjusting comps. I thought, oh my god, I have to let him know so he can correct that. I began searching for your email address or contact info and finally stumbled upon this blog post and I see that you are aware of it. Thanks for the book. I’ve been an agent since 1999 and gave up trying to find a CMA software package that did what I wanted it to. They never seemed to make it easy to do adjustments to the comps. So by reading your book it inspired me to take a closer look at what CMA stuff was available now. Lo and behold, your Cloud CMA is part of my MLS in Atlanta. I had looked into it several years ago but I see that it is now pretty much what I want. Or maybe previously I had never delved too deeply into the nuts and bolts. So thank you for a great tool and a great book. It has given me several ideas I want to implement into my routine.

    Tim Maitski

Leave a comment