About Altos Research Corp.Altos Research is the premier source for real-time real estate research. Our real estate data and local real estate reports are used by financial firms, investors, and thousands of real estate professionals around the country. This blog is primarily authored by Mike Simonsen, co-founder and CEO of Altos Research. Other ways to be in touch: Chat with us right now! |
Tuesday, August 5. 2008Report: National Home Prices Down By 0.8% in JulyOur latest National Housing Market Report is out. This one examines data through end of July 2008. You can download the PDF here.
Tuesday, May 27. 2008Case Shiller - Surprise! Home Prices dropped a few months agoMacroMarkets released the monthly Case Shiller Index today. Case Shiller tracks repeat sales of single family homes. Like most real estate data (except ours of course) the Case Shiller lags the actual market by several months. This is data for March 2008.
![]() Nationally we saw a less-steep price decline in the last few months than we did at the beginning of the year. As a bonus, let's look at the Denver chart. The Denver metro actually defied the national carnage until October of last year. Case Shiller picked that up too and you can see that Denver is the smallest of the declines in the sample. We've actually seen a small uptick in Denver pricing this spring. (Don't be fooled by the scale on this chart. With the tight scale, it looks like a rocket, but it's only a few thousand dollars difference.) ![]() Home price trends in the Denver metro market for the 12 months ending May 2008. The tight scale on this chart makes it look stronger than it is, but at least it's not falling through the floor. See also:
Posted by Mike Simonsen
in Case Shiller, Housing Market, Real Estate Data, real estate research
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Tuesday, February 26. 2008Real Estate Derivatives WorldBack in New York this week for the Real Estate Derivatives World shindig hosted by Terrapinn. I know. Paaartay! It's actually exciting for us as we're beta testing new data products we've designed especially for the real estate derivatives traders. Here's a quick glimpse of the Altos 25-City Composite Price, which tracks the Radar Logic 25 markets and the Altos 10-City Composite Price, which tracks housing markets covered with the Case Shiller national Index. ![]() Altos 25-City Composite and Altos 10-City Composite home price metrics for major metros around the country. Data as of February 22 2008 Full product launch and details soon. If you're interested in the housing futures markets, we should be talking. Link: Altos Real Estate Derivatives Data
Posted by Mike Simonsen
in Case Shiller, Economics, Housing Market, Radar Logic RPX, Real Estate Derivatives, Trend Charts
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Tuesday, February 19. 2008Real Estate Data: Austin EditionThe New York Times last week carried a story on the tale of two housing markets.
We'll leave aside the fact falling prices in the struggling industrial towns and the falling prices on the coast are barely related to each other and focus instead on the last statement. Are home prices in Austin, Texas indeed holding up? Let's look: ![]() Comparing home price trends in Austin Texas, Phoenix Arizona, and San Diego CA From our perspective, Austin is indeed holding up better than some of the most bubbly markets, like Phoenix and San Diego. Keep in mind though that in every market, the answer is: it depends. It depends on your price point, it depends on your neighborhood. In fact if we dive into Austin a little deeper, we find where that even though the prices haven't adjusted deeply, we can see where market demand is indeed cooling. ![]() Days on Market for homes in Austin Texas. Data as of February 15 2008. Each line is a price quartile. First Quartile are the most expense 25% of homes on the market. Days on market is climbing steadily across all price points. Despite a seasonal improvement in market time, The high end of Austin is on the market for a pretty long time right now. Buyers are in no hurry. Furthermore, in Austin, when you look at the price quartiles, you can see the top of the market is squeezing but the bottom remains reasonably solid. This often implies, as the Times suggests, that the underlying economy is strong, immigration is positive, and people aren't so worried about their jobs. Here's the chart of home prices in Austin, by quartile. Note the slight squeeze at the top end of the market. ![]() Real Estate Price trends in Austin Texas as of February 15 2008 So I'll conclude with a cautious agreement with the Times. Yes indeed there are markets so far escaping major carnage. Many of these markets didn't have the incredible upside in the past few years, so that stands to reason. Finally though, nearly all markets are showing signs of weakness. The key worry for all these markets is that they're following the economy, not leading it. If a recession evolves into full bloom, I don't see how anyone is spared. Links: Sunday, February 17. 2008Real Estate Data: Dallas Edition
[aside: as a snobby Californian, this is what I instinctively think of when I think Dallas homes. But this makes me want to move there.] Link: Our free Dallas Real Estate Research Tuesday, February 12. 2008February 2008 National Housing Market ReportLast week we published the February editition of our National Housing Market report [PDF download]. I was traveling and forgot to add it to the blog, so here it is. We've expanded the coverage this month and added a few more cities ebyond the initial 20 covered by the Case Shiller Index. We'll add a few more important cities in the upcoming versions of the reports too. Here are the highlights from this month's report.
Posted by Mike Simonsen
in Altos Research, Bay Area real estate, California real estate, Case Shiller, Denver real estate market, Housing and Real Estate Trends, Housing Market, Los Angeles Real Estate, press coverage, Real Estate Data, Real Estate Market, Real Estate Report, real estate research, Real Estate Trends, San Diego Real Estate, Southern California Real Estate
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Friday, January 11. 2008January 2008 Real-Time National Housing ReportLast month we started publishing the Real-Time National Housing Market Report with Steve at Real IQ. The January 2008 edition was published yesterday. You can download the full report here.
Here's the press release that accompanied this months report.
Friday, January 4. 2008Getting Some Attention!We've had some really nice attention in the press and blogosphere the past week or so. Here's a quick summary so you can see what people are saying about Altos. O'Reilly Radar: Tim O'Reilly highlights our real-time data products for Wall Street and the housing derivatives markets. I'll be presenting on this topic at the O'Reilly-sponsored Money:Tech conference in New York February 6-8.
Dustin thinks we're going to get acquired. And Robbie gives us a nice plug on Rain City Guide. The bloggers at Redfin have been especially prolific lately. I like the approach Redfin uses for their blogging work. They've got a team of bloggers, each with an intelligent voice, tackling the local real estate markets they're in. None of it is too controversial, but it's solid content, targeted well for their customers.
Altos Links: National Data for the Housing Derivatives and Case Shiller markets Thursday, December 13. 2007Real-Time National Housing Report Released
In it we look at 20 major metro markets, publish some key stats about pricing and supply and demand trends and we draw some conclusions about what's happening out there. The U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) covered in the report include: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, and Washington, DC. We're working in conjunction with Stephen Bedekian from Real IQ. Stephen is an industry leader, writer, and consultant and he helped bring this project together. This being the first issue, it took us a few extra days of editing. In future months, we'll be aiming to publish the report just a few days after month's end. The latest version of the report is available for download on our financial institutions page. Or you can download the PDF here. The Press Release headline this month isn't any shocking news - Surprise! Prices are still under pressure! But we're laying the foundation here to be the first to identify the eventual bottom of the market. From the press release:
Thursday, December 6. 2007Denver Housing Market Turning the Corner?If you've watched the Case Shiller Index numbers this year, you might have noticed that Denver, Colorado is the lone market still registering positive housing price gains for 2007. (BTW: if you prefer Uncle Sam's OFHEO numbers, you'll have just this week discovered that the US housing market is under pressure.) We've been watching Denver too, because that a market that's been bucking the trend. We recently opened our subscription service for real estate professionals in Denver, as well as home buyers and sellers there. Here's what the median price looks like for the Denver MSA, in a rolling average over the past several months. ![]() Denver Real Estate Market as of December 2007. Median Home Price rolling average. Single Family Homes. You can see from the chart, home prices in the Denver area have so far missed the bursting that's hitting most of the rest of the country. Up just fractionally, but steadily this year. Why the resilience? A couple reasons probably: 1) Colorado real estate didn't have as much upside in the last few years to begin with. 2) The economy and investment levels are still strong. 3) Denver is just a little bit of a laggard economically behind the coastal cities. That implies the burst simply hasn't hit Denver yet. Looking at the rolling average smooths out weekly noise, so the trend is easier to see. But using a three month rolling average, it'll lag the real-time market a bit. The next chart is the weekly sample. ![]() Denver Median Home Price thru December 2007. Real-time sample. Single Family Homes In this image we're just starting to see the weeklies break below the 90-day rolling average. Too early to make a big bet, perhaps, but a noticeable change nonetheless. Plus, if you look at the city of Denver the change is much more pronounced. Zowie! That's quite a drop. (caveat: don't discount the seasonal impact that's surely happening in some capacity here.) ![]() City of Denver median single family home prices. Keep an eye on Denver. I'll be fascinated to see if that town is able to demonstrate real staying power, or if it's just a few months behind. Links: Free research for the Denver housing market Free research for the Aurora housing market etc. Tuesday, December 4. 2007John Keith, Boston Real Estate Broker
John's blog is excellent. He's been very effective integrating the Altos market analytics information into his posts. So we asked him to write a post for us about how he uses the Altos Research services in his business, his blog, and with his clients. John also generously included an endorsement, which I'm more than happy to include here. Note: I've done a tiny little bit of editing, and I added the images. Everythig else comes directly from John. Enjoy:
I am a Boston real estate agent. I have a blog devoted to Boston Real Estate, at bostonreb.com. My blog has a main page with daily updates of news and information about the Boston real estate market. In addition, on this page, visitors can search through all the condos and single-family homes listed for sale in our local Multiple Listing Service. Also, visitors may click through to pages of information I have written that are of specific interest to buyers, sellers, investors, etc. I signed-up as an Altos Research client several months ago. I thought it would be a great way to provide another much-needed service to my site's visitors. More importantly, I figured it would make me be seen as an "expert" on the Boston real estate market. Therefore, visitors would be more likely to inquire about using me as their real estate agent, increasing my business (and my revenue). After being an Altos Research client for several months, I have seen very positive results and can say I'm very happy I have made the investment.
How I Leverage Altos Research in My Blog and Business Banner for John Keith's blog BostonREB.com. Note the MLS Search, Market Reports, and New Developments dedicated pages. These are the three things that everyone wants to know about. The Market Reports, of course, come from Altos. This past week, I added separate neighborhood-specific pages to my blog. [ed: here's The Fenway, for example.] These pages have blog entries devoted to each major Boston neighborhood. The idea is, visitors to my site will start on the main blog page, then click through to read more about specific neighborhoods. I have an AltosChart on each of these neighborhood- specific pages, set up to show market data just for that neighborhood, by ZIP code. Probably some time in the near future, I'll be adding a link on these pages to each neighborhood's Altos market report (using each neighborhood's ZIP code). I'm also about to set up an MLS search, preset by neighborhood, showing just listings in that specific neighborhood. I expect this to have great results. The majority of visitors will continue to begin their visit on my main page, but then they will want to visit the page focused on just their neighborhood(s) of interest. By having the MLS search and AltosCharts on each neighborhood's page, I'm providing visitors with useful information.
How Strong the Call-To-Action? Measuring My Return on Investment Tuesday, October 23. 2007On Wildfires, Black Swans, and Home Prices.A paper in the Journal of Emergency Management came across my desk today. Measuring the Efficacy of a Wildfire Education Program in Colorado Springs Timely, considering the state of Southern California right now and of Tahoe earlier this summer. The program sounds like a fascinating way to increase awareness of the fire risk (awareness being the key factor in reducing the controllable variables). Preparation for disasters like this is of course subject to the Black Swan effect:
So what can public policy do to motivate people to better manage their exposure? In Colorado Springs, they evaluated every parcel, 35,000 of them, and gave each a rating. Now the city can tell me I have a very-high-risk property and get me thinking about trimming the pine boughs back from my cedar-shingle roof. Then they publish that information. When I go to buy a home in the area, I can factor that into my purchase. That's positive. But is it effective? And how do we measure changes in risk perceptions? The authors of the paper took a novel approach.
A market-based approach. Nice. Incent homeowners to fix the easy stuff that makes up most of the wildfire risk. Very cool. And the results?
In contrast, post-assessment there is no such correlation. Post-assessment wood roofs and wood siding now have a negative impact on price. As a result, people are migrating to safer building materials. Good stuff. Too bad it's a lesson a bit too late for the disasters this week. We'll keep an eye on the data to see if we can discern any immediate impact on home prices in San Diego from the fires. Will report back soon.
Thursday, October 11. 2007On The Sub Prime Tidal WaveThe Journal today shows off its peerless graphic design team with a fantastic illustration of the past three years of subprime mortgage lending. Wall Street Journal charts the sub-prime tidal wave The accompanying article reveals little that the bubblistas haven't been crowing about for years, but a few bits bear repeating here. The first reiterates my view that the housing market correction has many years before recovery.
[As an aside, am I the only one who noticed how many of this year's Inc. Magazine 500 fastest growing companies were mortgage lenders?] The second gets to a less commonly asked question about the whole subprime blowup--who really is the "victim" here? Does anyone really deserved to be bailed out by the feds?
Let me get this straight, Darla. You knowingly took a deal from a lender willing to front you the cash, despite your already bad credit, with super low payments to get yourself into your dream home. Now you're living there and NOT EVEN PAYING? Bad luck, sure. A risky investment that didn't pay off, that happens. I'm sure you didn't at the time have a deep appreciation for the highly leveraged scenario you put yourself in. God knows we've all made risky investment decisions that in retrospect were crazy-stupid. (As they say, experience is not something we get until just after we need it.) What riles me is that this is a perfectly legal deal with two parties taking risk in exchange for an enticing return. Is this really a situation that deserves to be bailed out? So-called predatory lending gets a lot of headlines. No doubt fraud has been comitted in many cases. It's just a bit hard to must a ton of sympathy for any of the participants. [Another aside: Make sure you read Michael Lewis' hilarious satire of this position on Bloomberg.] |