WOW… look at all that information. Surely, there is something useful in there!

Summary Opinion: Data Coop is like drinking from a firehose… you will be all wet, but not very satisfied. There is a ton of data, and some of it could be useful sometime, but relying on that data “as-is” for anything close to credible would be foolhardy.

The West Penn Multi List has brought CoreLogic’s “Data Coop” live this week. So lets take it for a spin. A look at 5001 Pioneer Court (an active listing) above gives us basic information available in the typical MLS sheet, but then expands that information to other publicly available info.

When we pull up the “Neighborhood report",” we get some statistics for the Murrysville mailing address, and at first this appears that it would be a useful tool to hand to a prospective buyer, but then we get the following:

These are the three nearest schools to this property… however, none of them are in the subject property’s school district, or even in the same county. This is immediately concerning because if this information were to be relied upon to inform a buyer, we could be liable for misinformation.

As we go further into the report, we find that the Data Coop offers an AVM (Automated Valuation Model).

Here we are given a list of 5 properties, all from Franklin Regional SD, with a range of sales prices from $258,000 - $325,000, and four of those properties being in the same plan being being $273,000, $315,000, $320,000 and $325,000. So, where does the AVM come in… $362,000? It seems that the AVM is placing greatest weight on the current listing price, which would be $40,000 higher than the highest sale in the last 3 years. We’ve performed this same kind of analysis in more difficult areas to appraise, and in addition to crossing county lines, the AVM also crosses school district lines. These practices are typically only performed in the case of highly unique homes and require a great deal of analysis.

These are truly troubling. There is a lot of information here, but there doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to it. This is important because CoreLogic claims to be the foremost leader in home valuation technology. Their data is actively used by government organizations, but appraisers regularly report that the information that they are deriving their data from is flawed, and the analysis they are performing is deeply flawed.