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Every month I sit down and try to put together an interesting and educational picture of the Greenwich, CT real estate market. I look over the monthly data, read articles, review blogs (even those of other realtors), search the web and recall what I have been seeing throughout the month. Having come from a finance/business background, I am used to looking at numbers and researching markets. I've been analyzing information on real estate my entire career. I know all the excel shortcuts. I know how to run all sorts of calculations and analysis. After all of this the only thing I can say for certain is that there is never only one way to look at a dataset or a market. This is especially true in the residential real estate world, when there really isn't that much data and so much of the value is driven by opinion.
To get the value of a commercial property you discount the property's cash flow. There is a lot more behind creating the cash flow and deciding on the rate to discount it by, but essentially that is how you (can) value a commercial property. In the residential world we don't have cash flows coming out of each property (one month I'll explain why rentals don't apply here). We ultimately have to rely on something much less mathematic when valuing residential homes: opinions.A residential property is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. I know that's kind of a cop out as anything is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Unfortunately I can't dig much deeper.
People determine what they are willing to pay based upon the surrounding properties, how they are feeling economically and how much they like the property. Keep digging and you'll find the word "opinion" pop up a couple of times. Opinions drive the value of the product that I try to sell. It is not my job, nor should it ever be, to try to change an opinion. It is my job to feed my clients as much pertinent data as possible and let them decide what they believe the value is. I have decided this month to include links to my monthly data review, as well as some other posts I have made, which might interest you.
I thought this would shorten my every-growing emails and allow those who are interested to pursue further.
Here goes:June Greenwich Real Estate NumbersInteresting SalesInteresting ListingsI hope you are having an excellent 2011 and wish you the best in the second half of the year. As always, if you ever want to talk about Greenwich Real Estate or know of someone who is looking let me know.Regards,Scott
