HomeIQ Methodology

Location — measured from your lot lines, not a centroid (patent pending)

Edge-to-edge, not center-to-center

How far is your home from the lake? Most valuation models measure from the center of your parcel to the center of the feature, which can report a five-acre waterfront estate as “two hundred meters from water” because its center sits well back from the shoreline it physically touches.

HomeIQ's patent-pending method measures the shortest line between your parcel's boundary and the feature's boundary — the single closest pair of points, one on each shape. If the two shapes overlap or touch, the distance is zero and you front the feature. The engine evaluates boundary segment pairs and returns the minimum on the curved surface of the Earth, in meters (geodesic measurement on the WGS-84 spheroid using PostGISST_Distance(geom::geography, feature::geography)). A waterfront lot reads as waterfront. A home one street back reads as one street back. A parcel whose boundary kisses a park reads as park-fronting even if the house sits at the far end of the lot.

Each force has its own decay curve

A disamenity does not stop at the property line — it fades. A highway's noise attenuates roughly three decibels per doubling of distance. A small park's charm vanishes when you turn the corner. HomeIQ models each effect as an exponential decay:

λ (lambda) is the “decay length” — the distance over which the force drops to about a third of its peak. Each feature type gets its own λ: a highway carries far (long λ). A small park's charm is hyper-local (short λ). A waterfront view evaporates the instant a roofline blocks it (the shortest λ of all). Each λ is set from the published research for that kind of feature — highway noise, lake frontage, golf course, transmission line — each is a literature of its own.

Your property's locational adjustment is the sum of every feature's curve, evaluated at your parcel's true edge-to-edge distance. The dollar amount is then re-anchored to your own comparable sales, so the curve sets the shape and the market sets the magnitude.

The model re-tunes itself every night — re-deriving across the state and checking the realized distribution against expected distributions. Two knobs govern it: τ (materiality, how strong a feature's pull must be before it earns a headline) and λ (the reach of each feature type). It is a control loop: measure, compare, adjust, converge. The number on your report tomorrow is calibrated to the market as it stood tonight.

Comparable selection — Fannie Mae neighborhood-first

Fannie Mae §B4-1.3-03 and -08 require that comparable sales be drawn from the subject's own neighborhood or competitive market segment first. The segment is bounded by real dividers — streets, waterways, freeways, desirability lines — not a radius and not a comp-count target.

HomeIQ selects comparables through a resolved segment key in this order:

1. Subdivision or plat — parsed from the legal description. Per Fannie Mae, comps from the same subdivision or project are preferred.
2. Census tract — the populated bridge that beats ZIP or radius when subdivision data is unavailable.
3. Radius ladder — 1.5 → 3 → 5 → 8 → 12 km as the last resort, never lifting to unlimited and never reaching into a non-adjacent price tier.

Location is controlled by selection — not adjustment. As long as every comp sits in the subject's own segment, the location line is zero. A competing-area comp is admitted only with an explicit location delta derived from the submarket fixed-effects model.

Broker sign-off

Every HomeIQ CMA is a Broker Price Opinion prepared pursuant to Florida §475.25(1)(s) and signed by Jose Martin, Qualifying Broker, License BK3177826. Stage-1 does not include an interior inspection. Comparable condition is assumed at average, move-in ready condition unless listing photos or county records indicate otherwise.

The broker signs only when the four pillars are met — consistency, accuracy, defensibility, rationality — and only when the methodology traces to Fannie Mae §B4-1.3 at every line. Every adjustment is market-derived; no magic constants, no rule-of-thumb adjustments, no floor substituted for the comp reconciliation.

The same methodology feeds all three HomeIQ reports — Price Check, Gameplan, and Outlook — because consistency across the report family is the product. If they disagreed, the broker could not sign any of them.