A company that offers real estate professionals valuations on virtually all single-family properties in the U.S. is launching a version geared toward investors.
Attom Data Solutions announced the creation of its new rental automated valuation model (AVM), which will provide estimated monthly rents for 72 million single-family and condo properties across the U.S.
Attom has long provided home price and equity data for about 99 percent of properties in 3,000 counties across the U.S., but it felt it could better meet the needs of investors.
“The piece that we always felt we were missing was particularly in the investor world, what kind of rent could this home get?” Todd Teta, chief product and technology officer at Attom, told Inman.
Like the rest of Attom’s various property valuation models are updated monthly, which Teta says will help to give investors timely information about what they can charge for rent.
“Having insight into [fair market rent] is going to help protect investors from inflationary risk,” Teta said. “Because of this nature of the asset class, you can change rents more frequently.”
Teta compared the new product to Zillow’s Rent Zestimate, the online portal’s proprietary version of a monthly rental price for an individual home. He said there are an estimated four or five other competitors with similar services.
Like the Rent Zestimate, Attom says its rental AVM product is being targeted to portals that may want to use it to enhance listings. It will also be used by investors to analyze individual properties, by lenders to verify and assess a proposed investment and for market analytics in general.
Attom’s rental AVM will provide low and high values for estimated rent, along with the date of the given valuation,
“Accuracy…is a key feature that customers ask about,” Sean Mooney, Attom’s vice president of product management, said during a webinar previewing the product last week.
The typical inputs for the rental AVM include ZIP code, data from the city and county, and other details like neighborhood, school district and local subdivisions.
During testing of the new product, Attom says it found its median absolute percentage error — or a measure of how close to an actual listing price is to the estimated price — was 5.4 percent.
“We feel good. We held [the] launch on this product for 3-4 months just as we continue to tweak it to improve those numbers,” Teta said. “We’ll continue to improve this over time.”
The new rental AVM is available via bulk purchase. It will be available via cloud access, API and through Attom Property Reports later this year. Pricing will depend on the number of properties investors are hoping to target. That’s typically narrowed down to the county level, Teta said.
“Our customers can pull individual properties one at a time [and] get that feedback one at a time,” Teta said.
