PEXA Group’s Value Australia to transform property valuations

Value Australia, part of the PEXA Group Limited (ASX: PXA), is preparing to launch a large-scale, world-first pilot program to demonstrate its unique machine learning technology that will transform the way Australian property is valued.

The technology promises to deliver significant benefits to the $10 trillion Australian property industry, including to home-buyers, through greater transparency, improved planning and development, and more sustainable council and government revenue streams.

PEXA Group believes this kind of innovation is critical at a time when interest rates, inflation and Australia’s strong population growth are worsening the nation’s housing and rental affordability crises.

Unlike existing manual or automated valuation methods, Value Australia’s technology applies state-of-the-art data analytics and artificial intelligence to enriched property datasets, delivering highly accurate and consistent results in real time, with evidence-based reporting for every individual residential property.

“Accurate land and property valuations are the bedrock of the Australian property industry and are critical to state governments and councils in terms of calculating rates and land taxes,” Value Australia Chief Executive Officer Mark Nassif said.

“A staggering $70 billion of property taxes and stamp duties are collected in Australia, with valuations also essential for extracting the maximum value out of infrastructure projects and developments through measures such as betterment levies. Much of this money is pumped back into essential services, including vital new housing, yet the process of valuing property carries a huge administrative cost servicing objections and appeals.

“Our tool calculates accurate value assessments in minutes and post the trial will be available to homebuyers, investors, financial institutions and governments so they can make more informed decisions on the future of our cities.”

Mr Nassif said the award-winning technology had been independently validated through a trial by a Valuer General and assessments by a major Australian lender and a leading industry academic.

“We are now ready to launch a large-scale pilot primarily with financial institutions and government partners in the second half of 2023 before releasing more widely in 2024,” he said.

Value Australia’s machine learning technology is the result of five years of research and development collaboration led by the University of NSW Sydney and FrontierSI – a not-for-profit company that uses its expertise in spatial mapping to support government, industry and the community. It has won numerous awards including more recently the Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Award for Innovation.

In August 2022, PEXA Group acquired a 70% stake in Value Australia, with a view to maximising its property analytics and technology for the benefit of the property industry. The valuation services sector alone was worth $710 million in revenue in FY22, with $258.5 million from mass land valuations.

“Value Australia’s fully automated technology has the ability to learn inherent relationships and patterns between land value and sales price by analysing a complex set of land, property, locational and market movement data,” Mr Nassif said. “We are confident a six-month pilot will clearly demonstrate not only the accuracy of our technology but the potential for ongoing efficiency gains in strategic workforce planning, streamlined digital dispute resolution, auditing capabilities and quality assurance for land registries.”

PEXA Group Chief Executive Officer Glenn King said the Value Australia acquisition in 2022 was aligned with the Group’s strategy of unlocking value in the property industry through timely insights, addressing demand for land, land use and transaction efficiency and affordability.

“PEXA itself was a success story born out of a COAG collaboration, providing a digital solution to a government and industry problem and, as a result making it easier, safer and more secure to transact property,” Mr King said.

“We are now growing our insights business to provide governments, financial institutions, insurers, developers, industry and consumers more accurate and interactive informed data. Our involvement with Value Australia and Informed Decisions (.id) provides us with the capability to turbo charge our growing role across the property market.

“Value Australia’s ground-breaking technology has the potential to transform the land and property valuation process, delivering highly accurate valuations faster and at a lower cost than other methods.

“With the support of PEXA Group – with its resources, deep industry expertise and connections – we can accelerate Value Australia’s path to commercialisation for the benefit of the industry and continue our advocacy as the true honest brokers in a complex and critical sector that is the engine room of the economy.”

Earlier this month, PEXA and Value Australia signed an MoU with the Australian Property Institute, which represents more than 8,000 valuers in Australia, to further develop leading-edge solutions for the benefit of the industry and wider community.