I'm often asked my views on the real estate market. I have recently helped clients find and analyze several sources of data for presentations, interviews and RFPs. My impression is, even three years into the real estate downtown, many need help with understanding the high profile reports. So here are some comments on two.
Case/Shiller's home price trend is freqently cited to assess trends in home values. The index was developed by two very smart guys, one of whom predicted the real estate crash at least 3 years ahead of time. Case/Shiller tracks and reports on 20 cities to assess national trends - when reported (as today) the press surely takes notice, especially if it's a downer.
FHFA, fomerly known as OFHEO (I'm sure that helps!) reports its home price index (HPI) quarterly, and monthly in abbreviated form. The HPI reports changes in home values for the most recent quarter, year and 5 years. Instead of 20 cities, FHFA reports on 379 areas - called metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). The data used to develop the HPI comes from 35 million Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans made.
While FHFA does not report trends on jumbo loans (homes above $700K), it does provide a much broader geographic reach than Case/Shiller. Further it ranks the top 20 and bottom 20 performing markets, and provides many good graphs and maps illustrating trends by region, by state, and other factors. FHFA is free.
Both are valuable, as are reports from LPS, DataPoint, Altos and others. One challenge for folks is "what do I do with all this information?" (that's where we come in at Hayden Moore)
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