Posts tagged Albemarle

Bad Data, Sexual Offenders and Property Values

in Albemarle Charlottesville General Real Estate on

Question everything. Always.

You can search for sexual offenders in Charlottesville and Albemarle (and the entire Commonwealth of Virginia); but how do you know if the data is accurate?

Now that sexual offender data display is becoming more commonplace, how long until consumers start to eliminate areas outright because one sexual offender is nearby? What recourse do homeowners have?

Story after story shows that consumers don’t seem to mind that the big real estate sites don’t always have the most current or accurate real estate listings. Zillow is said to be a “starting point” in the process; but what if they end up being the only point consumers (wrongly) reference? It seems that many of my clients warily use Zillow, but I also know that they understand that Zillow is but one point in the research process and that all information on the internet needs to be vetted.

Sellers already care when the Zestimate for their home is absurdly and wrongly low – and they have no viable recourse to remedy said Zestimate. What recourse would homeowners have if the real estate search sites they use allow searchers to, say, filter out homes that are within one mile of a sexual offender?

What does one do about inaccurate sex offender data? It’s fairly easy for me to demonstrate how a zestimate is crap. It’s another thing for me as a real estate professional representing my clients to research the current and accurate location and then discover whether the offender is a violent offender or an innocuous one.

A study from a few years ago noted that sex offenders’ presence may devalue a home by 17%.

They find a reduction in housing prices of 17% within a tenth of a mile of an offender’s home, and find significant changes in price up to a third of a mile.

What if the referenced sexual offender is no longer there? Is Zillow (or whichever data provider, but they’re the big dog) liable?

Inman News brings this story back to the fore with their story yesterday. Sexual offender’s presence tends to elicit binary responses – either “yes, I’m willing to risk (whether personal or financial) living close to a sexual offender or no, I’m not willing to risk it. And Inman poses the question:

But even if the data is accurate, buyers might misinterpret it. Many offenders have not committed crimes that are as nearly as heinous as many might initially assume.

* If you’re a client or potential client, ask me for a story about a sexual offender in Charlottesville whose crime and presence in a neighborhood almost caused my clients to not buy.

There are nuances to data that demand more than a binary response. Is this the result that we want?

The data also could help herd offenders into enclaves, depressing home values in some neighborhoods and scaring away families with children.Research published by four professors from Longwood University in Farmville, Va., in late 2013 found that sex offenders tend to cluster together, and that such clustering increased from 1999 to 2009 in Virginia.

Read the whole story.

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Building a New Neighborhood in Charlottesville – Lochlyn Hill

in Albemarle Charlottesville Lochlyn Hill on

Community. It’s amazing how many of my buyer clients identify “community” as one of the top three criteria they’re looking for. We’re aiming to build that in a new neighborhood in Charlottesville.

My clients have heard me talk about this “coming neighborhood” for about two years; now dirt is finally moving, roads are going in, utilities are being run and house plans are being finalized.

Lochlyn Hill is a new neighborhood in Charlottesville – 5 minutes to downtown Charlottesville by car, 15 minutes or so by bicycle, with only local (mostly small) builders, with the focus being community and building homes. We’re focusing on building homes – and community – instead of more homes, our goal is to authentically and organically build a neighborhood.

Curious? I’ve posted a FAQ below, but thought you might be surprised (I was) by the view at the entrance to the neighborhood.

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Albemarle County Broadband Survey (Also, Broadband Increases Real Estate Values)

in Albemarle Charlottesville General Real Estate on

Last week I asked a seller’s agent to get the download speeds from a property in a not-so-rural part of Albemarle County.

“Here is what my tenant sent: The results were: Pings 36 Download 2.89Mbps Upload 0.47Mbps

My client will not consider this property, nor will they consider 75% of the properties that they find interesting – properties a bit outside of the City with a couple acres under $500k.

Albemarle County is conducting a broadband survey (click through for the press release).

A few thoughts before you take this survey:

1 – This is just such an opportunity where this should be a City of Charlottesville and County of Albemarle (and UVA) survey, not an isolationist one.

2 – How does this fit in with the Albemarle County School system seeking to build a dark fiber network? Note it’s an “upgrade” in the budget. (and who’s bidding on and building it?)

3 – High speed internet increases property values. I haven’t found the numbers defined (yet) but I’ve heard that high speed adds $7,000 to a property’s value. In more stark terms, often the value is a binary one – in that high speed access yields a yes or no.

4 – Not having high speed internet access in rural parts of Albemarle County negatively impacts education.

5 – Why is Korea so much more advanced than the US?

6 – If a state wants to be known as the crossroads of America and to attract local, national and international businesses – and what state doesn’t? – even its smallest communities need to offer broadband connectivity via fiber to the home (FTTH).

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A Short Look at the Charlottesville Real Estate Market – April 2014

in Albemarle Charlottesville Market statistics on

Remember the $8,000 homebuyer tax credit? Remember how it pulled demand forward and compressed the 2010 real estate market (in Charlottesville at least)?

In trying to figure out the first part of 2014, that’s the best sort-of-analogy I can make. So far, things are looking less awesome than they would appear. There are so many nuances that I tend to look at for clients – new construction versus resale, proximity to whatever it is that is important to them and that particular sub-real estate market, interest rates, ability to walk or bike to groceries and more. But. For a brief high-level look –

It looks like the first two months of 2014 were slower than the first two months of 2013 and March is when the market starts to pick up.

Remember – “Normal” is “Now.”

When do homes Come on the market in Charlottesville - 2014

Still trying to figure this out …

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Wave! to the People Visiting your Neighborhood

in Albemarle Buyers Charlottesville General Real Estate on

Free Daddy and His Little Shadow Girls at The Skate Park Creative Commons

I have never shown a house in the neighborhood where the neighbors waving was deemed offensive by my buyer client evaluating the neighborhood.

Two of the criteria I and my clients tend to frequently apply when evaluating neighborhoods and areas is how friendly the neighbors appear to be. Think about it the next time you’re out for a walk. A wave and a smile go a long way.

I drive through a lot of neighborhoods in the course of a week and while there’s not yet an algorithm that measures the waviness of a neighborhood and I haven’t yet seen a smileZestimate for a neighborhood, friendliness is pretty easy to discern.

The family riding bikes together in the middle of the day last weekend? Left a great impression on my clients (and they were all wearing helmets).

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Mount Rushmore of Chefs + Blue Ridge Food Bank = Good Dinner for Great Cause

in Albemarle Charlottesville on

The Blue Ridge Area Food Bank has been one of my family’s preferred charities for a few years; they do tremendously important work in the Charlottesville area.

When the folks at Charlottesville 29 food blog reached out to me about my writing a story about the dinner, my first question was – how much of the $250 per ticket goes to the Food Bank? The answer:

The entire $250 goes directly to the food bank. The chefs are donating their time, and we’ve got lots of purveyors donating food and wine (The Rock Barn, Caromont Farm, Rappahannock Oyster Co., Blenheim, Trump, etc). Any additional expenses will be covered by a donation from my law firm. So, every penny of ticket sales goes to the Food Bank.

That makes for some nice, easy math. $250 x 100 tickets = $25,000 which equals 100,000 meals. So I bought two tickets. As of this writing, there are 33 tickets left.

With your support we will provide healthy, nutritious food to more than 119,000 children, families and individuals every month. Every dollar you give will provide 4 meals! And since we expect to provide more than 16 million meals this year, we need your help!

From Charlottesville 29 blog:

Last year, five chefs were named to the Mt. Rushmore of Charlottesville chefs for their extraordinary contributions to the Charlottesville dining scene: Craig Hartman, Angelo Vangelopoulos, Melissa Close-Hart, and the duo of Tim Burgess and Vincent Derquenne. On April 13, the birthday of Charlottesville’s original gourmand Thomas Jefferson, these elite chefs will come together at The Space Downtown for a once-in-a-lifetime Charlottesville culinary experience, honoring their achievements.

After a reception of the chefs’ hors d’oeuvres, guests will sit down for dinner — a set menu of five courses, each prepared by a different Mt. Rushmore chef.   Wines will be paired with each course.

If you can, please consider donating to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. You can buy tickets to the dinner here.

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