Home sales near you: November
Click HERE for an Excel file that shows ZIP codes in the Baltimore metro area, ranked by change in average price in November 2007 vs. November 2006.
Click HERE to see the ZIP codes ranked by change in sales.
Click HERE to see an alphabetized list.
You really only need one, of course: Once it's open, you can sort it whichever way you'd like.
Just remember that I've only included those ZIP codes with at least five sales in November 2007 and at least five sales in November 2006. That's my attempt to toss out the apples-and-watermelons comparisons that are much more likely when an area sees only a handful of sales (you can imagine the price skewing if a couple mansions sold in one month and a couple condos sold in the other).
Even so, there's almost certainly other examples of skewing. Keep that in mind, especially for ZIP codes showing huge swings, positive or negative.
The statistics are crunched from home sales data provided by Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. You can look up results of individual ZIP codes -- including days on market, which I don't have access to -- by going HERE. MRIS says the home sales database it provides me is newer and therefore more accurate than its look-up page, which should be why the two don't always agree.
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Comments
This is good stuff....I only wish unit mix was incorporated.
Posted by: Kevin | December 27, 2007 10:13 AM
Yeah, there's no easy way to get at that. But I'll take another look at my options next time I do number-crunching.
There's a detailed breakdown on the MRIS site, of course, but you can't quickly compare all the ZIP codes there.
Posted by: Jamie Smith Hopkins | December 27, 2007 1:51 PM
You can't access the MRIS though unless you are affiliated with a broker or title company correct?
Posted by: Terry | December 30, 2007 11:45 AM
Terry -- MRIS has a publicly available search page that lets you look at some sales information by ZIP code or jurisdiction. The link I provided will send you directly to the ZIP code page.
Posted by: Jamie Smith Hopkins | December 30, 2007 11:59 AM
The problem with using "average" is that it does not give any information about which price ranges saw the largest sales. Currently, the only people who can afford to buy are those with lots of money to burn, and they would generally buy in the higher price ranges. Therefore, November 07 prices average prices are, most likely, artificially high. That point can be best illustrated in zip code 21212, where you can find neighborhoods representing the two extremes of wealth. A +38% average price range increase from November 06 to November 07 can only be due to sales of higher-priced homes, whereas homes in low-income and middle class neighborhoods are simply not moving. I'm not sure how to fix this bias towards higher-priced homes ... perhaps a histogram binned by price ranges may give more useful information about how homes are moving. Or maybe plotting the data using price vs. square foot area of the homes. I'm no real estate or statistics expert, so I'm not sure how to deal with this.
Posted by: Shireen Gonzaga | December 30, 2007 12:06 PM
Hi, Shireen -- that's precisely the sort of apples-to-watermelons problem I warned about, and there's no simple way around it, alas. I don't have access to square-foot data. (I wish I did; that would be excellent.)
What you can do is go to the MRIS look-up page for ZIP codes -- I gave the link in the post above -- to see the number of homes sold in the various price ranges. 21212 looks fairly well distributed in November 2007, but more weighted toward lower price ranges in November 2006. (Or at least that's my conclusion after eye-balling it quickly.)
Posted by: Jamie Smith Hopkins | December 30, 2007 12:47 PM