New tool helps buyers navigate hot housing market, predicts future price drops

September 26, 2018 - 2 min read

Seeing the future

Looking to buy a home in today’s competitive housing market? Thanks to a new tool, determining when to bid — and even how much to offer — just got a little bit easier.

Let’s make a deal

A new tool called Knock Deals aims to give buyers a competitive edge in today’s hot housing market. It factors in nearly 100 data points — things like price, historical sales transactions, comparable sales in the area and even the past behaviors of individual real estate agents — to map a listing’s future performance.

It will then predict what the home will sell at, its number of days left on the market and the likelihood of potential price drops in the next two weeks. Finally, the tool ranks the listing on a scale from Awesome to Awful. Awesome deals, according to Knock, indicate a home is properly priced and that now is a good time to bid. Awful deals, on the other hand, mean buyers should bide their time and wait for a dip in price.

The tool also rates deals as Good, Fair or Poor. Buyers who are interested in particular listings can even ask Knock to find out how low the seller will go.

Right on target

Knock Deals is currently available for buyers in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and North Carolina’s Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham. So far, the predictions in Atlanta have been eerily accurate. In 80 percent of cases, the Knock Deals predicted price was within 4 percent of the final sales price.

The Deals algorithm is the same one Knock uses to determine values on homes submitted to its trade-in program, which allows homeowners to sell their property and move into a new one virtually simultaneously.

“Knock’s proprietary predictive algorithms are the foundation of our Home Trade-In platform,” said Sean Black, co-founder and CEO of Knock. “They enable us to determine the right listing price and estimated time to sell for each customer’s previous house, as well as help them get the best possible deal on their next home.”

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Want to get ahead in today’s competitive housing market? Then shop around and apply for mortgage pre-approval today.

Aly J. Yale
Authored By: Aly J. Yale
The Mortgage Reports contributor
Aly J. Yale is a mortgage and real estate writer based in Houston who has contributed to Forbes and worked for organizations such as The Dallas Morning News, PBS, NBC, and Radio Disney.