Q: What does a low confidence score on an automated valuation mean?
A: It means the evidence behind the number is thin and the tool is saying so. In the run below the score was 45 out of 100, because there were only two adjusted sale comparables, no rent roll or condition record, and an unresolved conflict between how the property is marketed and the zoning code shown on its listing. A high score on that evidence would be a headline, not a valuation.
Most valuation tools do not tell you when their own evidence is thin. This is what happens when one does.
The run: 5302 W Crenshaw St, Tampa, FL
A Titleman BOV (broker opinion of value) run against a 12,874 SF industrial warehouse came back with a verdict of PASS, confidence 45 out of 100, risk flagged High. The property attributes - built 1979, Building Class C, last sold August 2022 for $2,000,000 - are taken from the public LoopNet listing, not measured by us. The run was made on a staff test account against a publicly listed address; no client data is involved.
What the run actually found:
- Rent comps: 10 comparables, current as of the run date, a band of $13-24.4/SF/yr.
- Cap rate band: 4.8%-5.3%, supporting an income-led (direct-capitalization) approach.
- Sale comps: only 2 adjusted transactions, $122-253/SF - thin, and the run said so rather than smoothing over it.
- Zoning: the property is marketed as industrial, while the zoning code shown on the LoopNet listing reads RSC-6 - a conflict the run surfaced instead of papering over. What that gives us is a disagreement between two pieces of public listing material. We did not check the municipal zoning record, so this is not a finding about the property's permitted use, and anyone acting on it should pull the zoning letter.
- Occupancy / physical condition: missing. No rent roll, no leasing sheet, no condition or capex record was available, and the run does not pretend otherwise.
A tool that returns "everything checks out, 95/100" on two transaction comps and an unresolved zoning conflict is not being rigorous - it is producing a headline. This run priced off real income and cap-rate evidence, flagged precisely where its evidence ran out, and named what to go get before anyone bets money on it: a zoning letter confirming actual permitted use, and either a land comp or a cost estimate to put a floor under the sale-comp side.
Why the low number is the interesting part
A confident-sounding valuation with two comps and an open zoning question is a liability, not a feature - it hides exactly the questions a buyer or lender would want answered before wiring money. The run's honesty about its own limits is the product working as intended, not a shortfall.
The market it sits in is measured four different ways
Zoom out from one building to the submarket, and the same discipline - say only what the evidence supports - turns up a second finding. Four national brokerages published Q2 2026 figures for Tampa industrial in the same quarter, and they do not agree:
- Cushman & Wakefield - vacancy 7.4%; average asking rent not in the material we verified. Source: Tampa Bay MarketBeat, Q2 2026.
- Matthews - vacancy 8.1%; average asking rent $12.86 psf, rent growth 2.4% year over year. Source: Tampa, FL Industrial Market Report, Q2 2026.
- Savills - vacancy 9.3%; average asking rent $9.05 psf, against $9.02 a year earlier. Source: Tampa Bay Q2 2026 Industrial Market Report.
- Avison Young - vacancy not in the material we verified; average asking rent $9.63 psf NNN, flat and near recent highs. Source: Tampa industrial market report, Q2 2026.
That is a 190-basis-point spread on vacancy and $3.81 per square foot on rent - 42% of the lowest published rent.
Here is what that spread is worth, as arithmetic and nothing more. On a hypothetical 100,000 SF building, $3.81/SF is $381,000 of annual rent. Divided by a 7% capitalisation rate - a round number chosen to show the scale, not a published Tampa cap rate - that is about $5.4 million. Do not read that as a difference in what any property is worth. It is not an opinion of value on anything. Part of the $3.81 is probably just two houses measuring rent differently. The point is how much rides on an unstated choice of source: a seller reading Matthews and a buyer reading Savills are not negotiating over the same asset.
None of the four reports is wrong. The gap sits in three places:
- Geography. A "Tampa Bay" MSA figure is not the same inventory as a "Tampa" figure. A shared label is no guarantee either: the widest vacancy gap in the set, 7.4% against 9.3%, is between the two reports that both say "Tampa Bay".
- Rent basis. Avison Young states NNN explicitly; the other public summaries do not all disclose their basis, and an unconfirmed NNN-versus-gross mismatch is the likeliest single explanation for the rent spread. That is our inference, not something the summaries confirm.
- Inventory. Flex, sublease and owner-occupied stock are included or excluded differently by house, and the vacancy denominator is whatever each house counts as stock.
On the current quarter the houses diverge: Cushman & Wakefield reads flat quarter over quarter, Savills describes the first quarter since mid-2023 in which vacancy did not rise, and Avison Young reports leasing above 2.9 million SF with transaction volume roughly doubling. We deliberately quote no year-over-year vacancy change for any house, and our companion page on these four reports explains why: an earlier internal reading of a Q2 2025 edition does not reconcile with the Q2 2026 figure by simple subtraction, and we have not settled which reading is wrong. Anyone quoting "Tampa industrial is softening" as a present-tense fact should say which house and which quarter they mean.
What connects the two stories
A model that reports 45/100 and a market that four expert sources describe with a 190bps spread are the same lesson from two directions: in this market, right now, precision is not available, and pretending otherwise is the actual risk. A tool - or a report - that states its own uncertainty instead of hiding it is more useful than one that doesn't, not less.
What this page is and is not
This is one run on one building, plus a reading of four public brokerage reports. It is not an appraisal, not a valuation, not USPAP-compliant, and not advice on any specific asset. The property attributes and the zoning code come from a public listing and were not independently verified by us. Every brokerage figure traces to a named report you can open and check.