Then I would get occasional emails from the VRBO bots whose algorithms told me I was "in danger of losing my listing privileges" because of my "low conversion rate" - as if somehow it was my fault that 1000 people looked at my property (which I did not believe), 5 people inquired, and only 1 person (if that) actually booked. 

Bill, I think we can see how this is going to go from a technical perspective very easily.It is highly, highly unlikely that the housing stock the Zillow algorithms targeted is rich in SF that would make high-quality SF rentals, the kind of modest, understated, well-built places with a really sound traditional design and reasonable building quality that bear up under years of low-maintenance operations under heavy rental usage. 

This isn't some sort of 'hit or miss' home value estimation algorithm by Zillow.Based on the scope of area and transactions covered and considering that it only looks at repeat sales of the same group of houses and going back as far as 1975, it is one of the most reliable sources of home price movement there is. 

Compare this to heuristic, a similar concept used in mathematical discourse, psychology and computer science, particularly in algorithm design.There are so many MORE expenses and benefits to a rental property that are not even covered in the 50% "rule of thumb."

I would never consider doing it remotely or basing my numbers off algorithms or calculations like this .

We just use multiple public records and have a computer algorithm that looks at the data and tells us which ones are most likely to be motivated and/or vacant.

But that said, SEO is NOT a scam, and IF you follow the guidelines and understand the Google patent/algorithm, you can actually win the battle for leads.

Then, debt to income ratios for Fannie & Freddie requirements for loan approval which are just computerized algorithms.

Figure algorithm for market value is VERY conservative so it ends up killing most deals.

The algorithm would limit scores based on arbitrary absolute numbers, like $2,000,000.