Question: “Do the assessors use AI when valuing my property?”
Answer: No, not now. We did, to a limited extent, during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Artificial Intelligence, better known as “AI,” is one of the most-hyped technology buzzwords in use today. We read and hear about it affecting almost everything. Many people are afraid of how it will replace their jobs, Hearing the term, “AI,” can conjure up the idea of a “Skynet” (from the Terminator movie series) becoming “self-aware” and trying to eliminate human beings.
Right now, AI is a very hot topic for assessors. Just last month, I spent four hours attending three different webinars on AI’s use in assessing properties. The take-way from these webinars is that human assessors will not be replaced by thinking machines, but AI could make our jobs easier.
To date, the most common use of AI in assessing is to compare aerial pictures of properties taken a few months or a few years apart and pointing out the differences between the photos. Holliston used this during the COVID epidemic, when property inspections were limited.
There are companies that “train” computer programs to “know” the differences, for example, between a deck and a patio. Or, to say something new, such as a shed or a detached garage, is now on a particular property. When Holliston hired such a company during the pandemic, we then had a trained assessor review each and every one of the changes the program identified.
Another current use of AI in assessing is what are called “automated valuation models” or AVMs. These computer programs search through mountains and mountains of property data to predict what a property could sell for at a given period of time. You can see an example of AVMs by going to the Realtor.com website, putting in your address, and scrolling down to the AVM charts.
In Holliston, we do not use AVM data – or the prices that Zillow.com suggests – because we don’t know where their data comes from nor what algorithms they use to analyze that data. We do know that our data comes from actual sales of actual properties in Holliston, as recorded in the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds..
The Assessors’ Office spends a lot of time each year poring through that local data when preparing each fiscal year’s new assessments. A future use of AI, as I learned from the webinars, is to use computer programs trained to analyze our data and cut the time we spend doing that from weeks to just a day. It’s not possible yet, but the technology is getting there. And, trained assessors will still be needed to properly interpret the results.
So, do we use AI when valuing your property? Not really… not yet.
