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‘Proptech can now value homes better than agents’, claims platform

Nitin Aggarwal says although local agent knowledge is useful, his tech uses 'millions' of data points and is more accurate.

Nigel Lewis

nitin aggarwal property valuations proptech

A leading proptech figure has claimed that agents who have an encyclopaedic knowledge of their area are fast being caught up by platforms such as his which can ‘more accurately’ value homes.

Nitin Aggarwal (pictured), the 39-year-old founder of research platform Property Deals Insight, says he has built an Automated Valuation Model (AVM) which uses a wider range of data to inform its results than those offered elsewhere, including by the major portals.

His comments follow a piece run by The Negotiator last week in which industry figure David Hannah claimed that technology will ‘never replace estate agent local knowledge’.

Aggarwal, who is also a property investor, says he built his AVM after discovering that many agents in his home patch of Harrow in North London did not know the values of properties that they were marketing.

My AVM has millions of data points from trusted sources and is much more comprehensive than what local agents have in their heads,” he says.

Proptech

“For example, I use an accurate ‘average per square metre’ pricing metric for specific property types in specific areas, instead of generic local averages, taking the guesswork out of the equation.”

Aggarwal also says too many valuations by agents are inaccurate because, as has been claimed many times before, their key purpose is to attract instructions.

But Aggarwal appears unaware that he is a proptech swimming amongst sharks when discussing AVMs – many agents have disliked the march of digital tech into one of their key areas of expertise, and the early portal AVM price range estimates were often wildly inaccurate.

August 11, 2021

4 comments

  1. Hi Dharmesh
    How are you linked to Chancellors and what do you do there?

  2. Good morning Murray, hope you are well? The way I see it Hometrack is trusted by 85% of the largest lenders in the UK and it is an AVM, versus the knowledge of a single agent? I am not saying agents do not have knowledge, but in an average town of say 30- agents they all get a piece of the sales pie, so their actual micro data is maybe one 30th of what is going on locally.

    But an AVM will utilise millions of data points, that is why underwriters etc trust them.

    As to myth around the experience of the local agent, 40% of agents change their position every 18-months in residential agency in the UK. It might be a promotion it might be to exit the industry or change companies, so this rose tinted local agent with all the knowledge is often a hard working person with just six months in the job.

    Yes the seniors might be the same people in the branch but the frontline sales teams are often like a revolving door, and typically have an average age of 23-years. Software is a constant.

  3. Nonsense, as David Hannah said you cant beat experience so may be the Harrow agents were not well qualified to value. Prop Tech cannot be And theres no algorithm for experience and local knowledge as far as I am aware.

    • Data is an unstoppable force, the more data the better the valuations.
      There are already drone’s identifying pest’s in crops, drones identifying damage to wind turbines, soon there will be drones that can do better surveys of buildings than people.

      Aside from this, more is being digitised and with the volume of data becoming available it is inevitable a machine will do a better job than an individual person.

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