Homekeys ValueSearch™ tool receives “Most Innovative Technology” nomination from industry-leading real estate conference

July 22, 2005 (PRLEAP.COM) Business News
Winners to be announced July 27 at Inman Real Estate Connect 2005 in San Francisco

ValueSearch, an exclusive, patent-pending technology that helps buyers and investors find potentially undervalued residential properties, has been nominated for an Inman Innovator Award.

“ValueSearch is the first technology to add a dimension of value to online property searches,” said Homekeys President and CEO Manuel J. Iraola. “We’re pleased to be nominated with technology leaders such as Google for this award. We’ve focused a great deal of research and development on our buyer and seller tools, so it’s great to receive the recognition.”


“Homebuyers and investors spend hours and hours combing through listings to find potentially undervalued properties. Using a proprietary search engine and algorithms, ValueSearch helps identify homes that appear to be priced near or below market value, in seconds,” Iraola added.

Iraola said ValueSearch provides homebuyers and investors with a strategic approach to finding bargains in overheated real estate markets such as South Florida.

“Finding affordable homes is a problem. Many people get frustrated, spending months to find something suitable,” Iraola said. “Depending on your needs and your local market, you may see dozens of search results, but many are overpriced due to high demand. Homekeys users can leverage ValueSearch to narrow their search to the few properties that appear to be priced well, then refine those results with our ValueKey technology, a proprietary automated valuation model for real estate.”

Iraola said that ValueSearch extends the power of automated valuation models (AVMs), which have been used for years by mortgage lenders and other real estate professionals to provide objective property value estimates.

AVMs provide instant value estimates based on complex formulas that combine property details with comparable property sales, tax records, historic property values and other data. ValueSearch uses this information and more to create a system-generated value estimate that’s compared to the home’s listing price. Homes with prices near or below market value are then displayed as ValueSearch results.

ValueSearch technology currently is in limited release for South Florida residential properties. Homekeys plans to extend its entire suite of tools and services, including ValueSearch, to strategic markets around the nation.