Does the Wisdom of Crowds Help Valuations?
It was bound to happen. A former commodities trader combining his knowledge of supply and demand with the conventional wisdom that crowds are smarter that the sum of their parts and voila’ a new web site called www.my-currency.com. Aimed at bettering www.zillow.com and other on-line valuation sites, My-Currency is suggesting that it will be better at predicting the true market value of properties than sites that rely on public records, comparable sales and other factors. As a professional appraiser with years of education, demonstrated experience and testing, I usually get a big kick out of these 
types of sites. In this day and age of Internet valuations I usually suggest that you get what you pay for. Sure Turbo Tax and other on-line tax sites are great for simple 1040’s and 1040 EZ’s, but are you willing to trust your complex tax returns to anyone other than a trained professional? Are you willing to risk one of the biggest purchases, if not the biggest, you make to a crowd of people you don’t know and aren’t working on your behalf? In this day and age of various types of mortgage and real estate fraud, I hope that people still see value in using trained professionals.
It is an interesting concept though. My-Currency just launched and is in Alpha mode with only the San Francisco Bay Area active. A Beta site to launch by the end of February with more functionality. The site is launching with a great deal of fanfare.
“My-Currency.com will harness the wisdom of the crowd not only to achieve valuations, but to determine “who is the expert — the wisest of the crowd,” Tahawi said. “The value to real estate professionals is in the age of the Internet, 80 percent of people are starting their search online,” Tahawi said. “At the end of the day, when they need a human being, we’re providing depth and meaning to the names and faces.” My-Currency.com is expected to provide agents and brokers better visibility on the Internet because the site, once it has a larger user base, will show up high in search-engine results, according to Tahawi. As envisioned by Tahawi, My-Currency.com would be something like Zillow, the ActiveRain Real Estate Network, and the Chicago Commodities Exchange rolled into one. Visitors will be able to ask for valuations of a property by entering an address and basic information, or submitting a link to a listing. Other users will submit their valuation estimates (which the site treats as trades). The closer those estimates are to the market consensus that emerges over time — and ultimately, to the price of the house if it sells — the more reputation currency is earned.”
Â