The research
Insight is the product. The house is the outcome.
Every client engagement produces a written brief built for one decision: theirs. First-party data from the MLS and Realtors Property Resource, third-party records from county rolls to REIT filings, and the knowledge of someone who lives on the roads in question. Below are five real deliverables with the client, the addresses and the property-specific figures removed.
Included with representation. Also available as a standalone engagement.
Sellers · 25 pages
Listing presentation and pricing defense
What is the house worth, how do I know, and why is the number I recommend not a figure chosen to win the listing?
Three valuations run independently on different inputs, reconciled into a band. For a renovated mid-century ranch in Columbia County the methods landed within a few percent of each other, and the renovation was measured at roughly $235,000 of contributory value from paired sales, not asserted.
Inside
- Four recommendations up front: price, timing, positioning, negotiation
- Adjusted sales comparison, cost-plus-renovation bridge and renovated-cohort price per square foot, reconciled
- Paired-sales evidence for what the renovation is worth
- The month to list, from visitor and sales seasonality
- Who the buyer is and what they pay a premium for
- Credit-not-discount negotiation plan and next steps
Built from
- Flexmls closed sales, adjusted line by line
- RPR
- Zillow Home Value Index
- County assessment roll
- Listing history
Buyers · 9 pages
Land acquisition brief
A buyer wants two hundred and twenty acres. Which county, which parcels, and what does the market actually contain?
Every active listing over two hundred acres in Columbia and Dutchess on one scale. Columbia land traded at roughly a third of Dutchess per acre, six of eleven listings asked over four million, and nothing existed between $1.9 and $3.5 million. Eleven listings became two genuinely different decisions.
Inside
- Setting expectations: what the listing that prompted the search really was
- The county difference, every parcel over 200 acres on one chart
- How the market narrows from eleven to two directions
- Direction one, land now; direction two, working farm; the cost of each
- What a later farm build-out costs, clearing to barn
Built from
- Flexmls active and closed land listings
- County parcel and tax data
- Agricultural assessment status
- Listing histories
- Driven, walked, photographed
Investors · 10 pages
Investment acquisition brief
An investor wants an eight to ten percent cap rate on a manufactured home community within two and a half hours. Does that exist, and what is he being paid to accept?
The whole market inside the ring was five parks, none over thirty-seven pads. Institutions buy the asset class at an implied 5.4 percent. Three of six listings published expense ratios no park runs at, and once recast the ranking changed. New York's three percent statutory rent cap was in none of the listings and governs all of them.
Inside
- What an eight cap actually is, against REIT-implied pricing and Treasury spreads
- The whole market: every park for sale inside the ring, pads, price, drive time, water
- Advertised versus recast: expense ratios rebuilt with taxes, management and reserves
- The New York problem: Real Property Law §233-b, the 3% cap and residents' right of first refusal
- Financing reality for small rural parks
Built from
- LoopNet and MobileHomeParkStore listings
- Public REIT filings
- Treasury yields
- NY Real Property Law
- Operator-published rent growth
Buyers · 17 pages
Comparative land diligence
Three parcels near one village. Which is the homesite, which is the development play, and what do the records say the listings do not?
A decision brief ranking the three, a side-by-side on ask, acreage, tax, zoning, utilities and flood zone, and a record audit that found two recorded owners behind one marketed parcel, unpaid school tax, and well-and-septic language that had quietly changed between listing versions.
Inside
- Decision brief: one parcel per goal, and what changes the ranking
- Side-by-side reconciled to MLS and public rolls
- Record audit: listing claims against assessment roll, tax roll and GIS
- Zoning, flood, soils and access screening for each parcel
- Offer terms that price the closing risk found
Built from
- MLS listing histories
- County parcel, tax and GIS records
- Town zoning code
- FEMA flood zones
- USDA soils and USGS mapping
Buyers · 8 pages
Set showing plan
A couple has three days and a shortlist across four towns. How does the trip get run so every house gets a fair twenty-five minutes and the drive home is protected?
A sequenced plan by day, price and living area side by side so dollars per square foot can be compared honestly, a note on where the public record does not support a figure, and a ledger of every listing touched: retained, tentative or removed and why.
Inside
- Day plans with timed slots on a 25-minute viewing model
- Price, beds, living area and asking $/sq ft on one line per house
- The engagement ledger: every listing considered and its current treatment
- Route logic: sequence protects the drive home
- Full MLS sheets appended for the day's confirmed houses
Built from
- Flexmls
- Listing agents, confirmed appointments
- Driven route times
- Public record checks on stated living area
Why it is built this way
Three kinds of evidence, one conclusion.
First-partyFlexmls closed and active listings, Realtors Property Resource, listing histories, confirmed appointments and the numbers behind Houlihan Lawrence’s quarterly county reports.
Third-partyCounty parcel, tax and GIS records, town zoning code, FEMA flood zones, USDA soils, Zillow’s research index, Google Trends, commercial listing services and public company filings.
HumanTwenty years of brand, media and data strategy, and a house on Copake Lake. The roads get driven, the parcels get walked, the listing language gets read twice.
Specimens reproduce structure and market-level findings only. Client names, addresses, purchase prices and any figure that could identify a property have been removed or rounded. Individual MLS listing data is not republished. Nothing here is an appraisal. The free, monthly version of this work is the Upstate Market Brief.
