Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am one of those people who are on zillow obsessively and was REALLY looking forward to this book. I found it incredibly unsatisfying, filled with datamined correlations with no analysis of true causality, frequent conflations of cause and effect, and no meaningful takeaways for what to do differently as either a seller or a buyer. For example, the early parts of the book deals with identifying areas of faster than normal price appreciation. The authors conclude that the cliche that one should buy near downtown for the best price appreciation is invalid because in many cities, areas 20-30 miles outside of downtown (farther suburbs) often appreciated faster than downtown areas. It is blatantly obvious to me that as a city grows, formerly remote, uninhabitated suburbs become developed and commutable, which increase land values. However, the driving factor of suburban appreciation is the main city's growth, and so to know if a surburban area will appreciate, you have to determine the growth prospects of the city itself. This was not mentioned in the book at all. Instead, the authors looked at the data and said basically "it looks like some suburbs appreciate faster than downtown areas, therefore buy in suburbs, except this is not always true." The last caveat was the most frustrating of all, because of course this data pattern is not always true because the authors never got to the underlying cause of suburban appreciation. Another example cited in the book is that houses within 0.25 miles of a starbucks appreciate more quickly than houses farther from a starbucks. The appreciation seemed to happen after the starbucks entered an area. Ergo, argue the authors, starbucks CAUSED the price appreciation. Why is this? Authors shrug and say they don't know. I cannot imagine a stupider claim that conflates cause and effect. Starbucks is well known for being a harbinger of gentrification in its real estate choices. When determining where to open a store, Starbucks looks for demographic and housing trends that will (now or in the near future) support a core customer base for a store. They then open the store with the most favorable geographical and demographic trends. The cause of Starbucks location choices is its analysis of the market characteristics that predict gentrification. When these come to fruition, real estate appreciation is a byproduct. The secret sauce is what Starbucks is looking for, not the mere existence of a starbucks. In other words, if a starbucks opened a location on the south pole, would the authors expect an immediate explosion in south pole real estate prices? Or would the more logical conclusion be that Starbucks would never choose to open a store in the south pole? It would be one thing if the authors said "starbucks is really good at identifying gentrifying signals. We don't know what these signals are, but it's enough for buyers to piggyback on their analysis." That would be a fairly unthoughtful recommendation but at least it has some logic as long as Starbucks real estate division continues its good work. Instead, the authors actually said the opening of a Starbucks itself causes real estate appreciation. There are too many similar examples to list. (Calling a house cute decreases selling prices. Or could it be that small houses are intrinsically less valuable, and small houses are often called "cute"?) The book is also also use infuriatingly imprecise economic terms and concepts. E.g. "scarce supply CAUSES increased demand," saying "economics kicks in" whenever supply and demand is the explanation for something, like economics is a faulty furnace that kicks on and off at whim. The sections on buying/selling your house is insultingly obvious and throws in a few meaningless correlations they found in their mindless datamining without explaining the root cause. If it's not clear enough yet from my review, don't waste your time on this book. If you have any respect for economics, this book will only frustrate you to no end at how stupid the authors think you are.