]Story by R.A. Schuetz in the Houston Chronicle
An in-person appraisal can often cost around $500 and take days to schedule and process; appraisal company Clear Capital said an AVM can cost less than $30 for an instant, automated report. At Clear Capital, a team of appraisers and computer scientists fine tune their AVM day in and day out, looking for variables that could lead to more accurate results. Adding the distance from a noisy highway, for example, made the algorithm more accurate, said James Marshall, its director of real estate analytics products.
