Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Thursday, May 3, 2012, 2:42 PM
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[click to open press release]
Jed Kolko, Trulia’s Chief Economist on the sales market:
“Housing prices have already bottomed with asking prices on the rise for three straight months. Aside from a stumble in December, asking prices have been stable or rising for the last eight months,” said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s Chief Economist. “Prices have joined the recovery, alongside sales and construction. But foreclosures threaten prices, especially in judicial-foreclosure states like Florida, New Jersey, Illinois and New York, where many more distressed sales are still to come.”
on rental market:
“Rents have steadily increased as people who lost their homes in the crash became renters. At the same time, high unemployment and tight credit sidelined would-be homeowners,” said Jed Kolko, Trulia’s Chief Economist. “But relief for strapped renters may be in sight. Construction of multi-family buildings revved up last year. These new rental units will come to market later this year, giving renters more choices and less fierce competition.”
Here’s the April 2012 report and a breakdown of the largest metro areas.
The Trulia Price Monitor for April 2012 shows:
- Asking prices up 1.9% quarter-over-quarter, seasonally adjusted.
- Asking prices up 0.5% month-over-month, seasonally adjusted. This is the third straight month of month-over-month increases.
- Asking prices up 0.2% year-over-year, the first year-over-year increase in the price index.
- Asking prices up quarter-over-quarter in 92 of the 100 largest metros.
The Trulia Rent Monitor for April 2012 shows:
- Rents up 5.6% year-over-year.
New York Metro - you can see how much faster the rental market is rising over the sales market. In fact more than half of the NYC metro area are showing declining price trends.
The Trulia Price and Rent Monitors rely on the latest asking price or rent rather than the original to better track the direction of the market. Prices on MOM, QOQ and YOY on based on a 3 month moving average. Here’s the nitty gritty. Love the “technical” and “non-technical” FAQ notes detailing how it works.
Note: I have been on the Trulia Industry Advisory Board since its inception in 2006.
- Trulia Price Monitor Is Launched: New (Better) Way To Look At Housing Price Trends [Matrix]
- Rising Home Prices: Coming to a Market Near You [Trulia]
- Trulia Price and Rent Monitors – April 2012 [Trulia]
- Trulia Price and Rent Monitors – FAQ [Trulia]
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Thursday, April 5, 2012, 2:02 PM
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[click to open press release]
One of my issues with existing national price indices (I have many) has been that they reflect what happened after the fact. That in and of it self is not a bad thing at all. The problem concerns their use by the consumer and media. They rely on them and often have no idea of the severity of the trend lag (as much as 6 months). This lag is interpreted as the current market and then they proceed to mischaracterize or misunderstand what’s actually happening in housing right now.
Jed Kolko, the Trulia’s chief economist has come up with what looks to be a much better way to look at the direction of housing prices by following list price trends which lead home price trends by several months. He’s also created The Trulia Rent Monitor which addresses the same issues on the rental market. Both reports are based on what Trulia does well, aggregating and managing listing information by the boatload.
Trulia Price and Rent Monitors – March 2012 Download
The Trulia Price and Rent Monitors rely on the latest asking price or rent rather than the original to better track the direction of the market. Prices on MOM, QOQ and YOY on based on a 3 month moving average. Here’s the nitty gritty. Love the “technical” and “non-technical” FAQ notes detailing how it works. Jed is very clear that this is not a way to “game” the existing indices like Case Shiller and predict them in advance of their release (aka accurately predict what a 4-6 month old index result will be tomorrow) which serves an entirely different purpose I suppose.
I thought it was particularly interesting that some speculative and depressed markets are showing the most upside swing – i.e. Detroit, Miami, Phoenix. CA still weak throughout. The NYC metro results are consistent with what we are seeing throughout the region, prices down 3.3% YOY and rents are up 6.2% YOY.
From the press release, the Trulia Price Monitor for March 2012 shows:
- Asking prices up 1.4% quarter-over-quarter, seasonally adjusted. This is the first clear indication of a national home-price turnaround. Unadjusted for seasonality, prices were up 2.4%.
- Asking prices up 0.9% in March and 0.6% in February, month-over-month, after bottoming in January 2012.
- Strong year-on-year increases in asking prices throughout Florida, and year-on-year price declines throughout California.
The Trulia Rent Monitor for March 2012 shows:
- Rents up 5.0% year-over-year.
- Rent increases in nearly all large metros, especially metros with faster job growth.
Note: I have been on the Trulia Industry Advisory Board since its inception in 2006.
- Why US Housing Indices Make Terrible Investment Benchmarks [Matrix]
- Asking Prices on the Rise as Housing Recovery Expands [Trulia]
- Trulia Price and Rent Monitors – March 2012 [Trulia]
- Trulia Price and Rent Monitors – FAQ [Trulia]
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Monday, March 19, 2012, 8:41 AM
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Jed Kolko, Trulia’s Chief Economist, let me sneak a peak at his excellent post “Springtime for Housing” as he was placing the finishing touches on it last week. Knowing me all too well, he asked me to set aside one of my pet peeves with econo-housing stats – the use of seasonal adjustments – and focus on the long term view.
To understand the effects of long-term trends or one-time events on the market, housing wonks like to “seasonally adjust” data. That means we strip out the regular seasonal patterns in order to highlight trends or events. This is useful for deciding whether the market is really in recovery or assessing the impact of a housing policy.
He came up with some terrific visuals and identifies some interesting points. One of the most powerful to me was the fact that seasonal sales activity fluctuates a lot more than inventory.
Rising sales and build-up of inventory make for a spring housing market cocktail.
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Friday, February 3, 2012, 10:44 AM
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Had a lot of fun with Tom Keene, Bloomberg’s editor-at-large, radio and TV anchor on his must watch show Midday Surveillance yesterday. Always flattering to be asked to guest co-host for the hour and a challenge to keep up with his fast paced wit. I’ve always felt that Bloomberg news, now with new emphasis on TV is business news the way it should be delivered – longer interviews and neutral presentations.
The show’s theme was housing and I felt compelled to give him more reasons to hand-wring about his upcoming apartment rent increase. Was fun to do.
The hour was divided into 4 segments, the last three with guests:
Jed Kolko, Chief Economist, Trulia
Kenneth Rosen, chairman of the Rosen Consulting Group
Jacky Teplitsky, Real Estate Broker, Prudential Douglas Elliman
Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday.”
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Friday, January 6, 2012, 3:09 PM
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Trulia’s Insights Blog has some really cool…well…insights on the housing market via their robust data set. The blog as repository for this stuff speaks the language I aspire to:
We are investigators of unconventional house hunting trends, finders of hidden fun facts and believers in the beautiful.
Yes, information can be beautiful.
Disclosure: I’m one of the original industry advisory board members for Trulia – before they went live in 2006. They’re up to 27+ million monthly searches per month. Unreal.
Trulia Insights [Blog]
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 6:01 AM
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[click to open report]
Trulia released its Price Reduction Report for June 2010.
22 percent of listings currently on the market in the United States as of June 1, 2010 experienced at least one price reduction, which is a slight decrease from 23.6 percent in June 2009. The total dollar amount slashed from home prices was $26.7 billion and the average discount for price-reduced homes continued to hold at 10 percent off of the original listing price.
Last month (May) I speculated that the number of listings with price reductions will rise sharply after the tax credit expiration flows through the numbers. Pete suggests the same thing in this release.
“Sellers are optimistic heading into the summer season because of the strong sales figures from the spring. The spring sales were fueled by the expiration of the tax credit and my concern is that this heavy activity is providing sellers with a false state of optimism,” said Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia. “We are already starting to see rising inventory levels and I believe this will be the story of the summer. For the unforeseen future, buyers will continue to have the negotiating power and I expect we will see sellers get aggressive via price cuts throughout the summer.”
Is something happening in Minneapolis? For the second month in a row, Minneapolis, MN saw 40 percent of its listings reduced in price.
At 21%, the luxury market (>$2M) is consistent 22% for the overall market.
* Price reduction levels for luxury homes (those listed at $2 million and above) continue to hold steady with 21 percent of homes seeing a price reduction, averaging 14%. Luxury homes account for 2% of the inventory and 25% of total dollar volume cuts. It consistent with the overall weakness at the high end of the US housing market brought about largely from the higher underwriting requirements for jumbo financing and the disappearance of the secondary jumbo mortgage market which had largely been run through the capital markets.
I was somewhat surprised to see Phoenix in the top five since price reductions had been so severe over the past 4 years.
Top 5 cities with highest number of price reductions
[click to open full list]
Top 5 cities with lowest number of price reductions
[click to open full list]
Trulia Home Price Reduction Report [Trulia.com]
Posted by Jonathan J. Miller -Monday, April 7, 2008, 9:37 PM
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Got to hang out with Rudy Bachraty and catch up since he joined the Trulia team – he’s running the Trulia Blog now.
Rudy did this Trulia Voices video on the run. Fun stuff. Good grief – too much of me – I’m not an agent.
Remember the Verve Pipe?
