If there’s one thing the (self-proclaimed) Data Geeks of Altos enjoy, it’s a challenge – particularly one issued from a client.  Today’s challenge – “What rent can I expect from my residential investment real estate?”  OK, we got that handled. The answer was simple but not easy – the Rental Valuation Model. Click it...
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Here’s a fascinating Google search trend chart pointed out by a friend.     Two Google searches: the generic, “Buying a home” has been declining since the peak of the bubble. The cheap-mortgage-targeted  ”How much house can I afford?’ started spiking in early 2011, when the first signs of recovery in the non-judicial foreclosure...
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I’m hoping that this being the 4th of July holiday that neither Mike, Scott nor Jon will be paying enough attention to the blog to be alarmed by the appearance of a random bit of Postgres hackery.  This came about as the result of my wanting to get a feel for some of the...
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Ever wondered why your flat’s Zestimate bounces around so much? In high school economics class you might have learned about fungible goods. This strange word refers to things that could be swapped without the owners especially caring. A dollar is almost perfectly fungible, and so is an ounce of pure silver. Paintings and emotional...
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I don’t practice Santeria / I ain’t got no crystal ball / Well I had a million dollars but I / I’d spend it all… - Santeria, Sublime If you’ve followed Altos Research for any length of time, you’ll have noticed that we’re a bit pedantic about the orientation of housing market data. For years we’ve been...
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We have been giving our tech monkeys extra bananas lately to upgrade the Altos tools and create some exciting new applications – but we’ve been rather quiet publicizing them.  So I thought I’d take a moment to share some of the latest and bestest. New WordPress plugin – Sidebar Slideshow Charts Widget We love...
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I love love love this brand new presentation of housing trends by MacroMarkets. For those of you unaware, MacroMarkets is the firm founded by housing economist Robert Shiller, he of the Case-Shiller Index. They’ve included Altos Research data to round out the application so you can see market trends beyond just prices. They call it...
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