Silicon Valley Real Estate Investor

@mlomb I suppose it's because when it comes to lingerie, it's not love that's in the air in reply to mlomb #
@TXRealtyNews wholesaling contract assignment? nicely done! in reply to TXRealtyNews #
The Top Five Signs of More Real Estate Pain to Come http://post.ly/LtZx #
How to write a real estate business plan http://post.ly/LvlW #
The [...]

Although we are seeing some improvement in the economy, the county’s assessment roll is not in a healthy state, according to Santa Clara County’s assessor, Larry Stone…
Good news is we are seeing a resurgence in the stock market; the median home price has increased 15 percent to $500,000 and above – though still a far cry from $800,000 in 2007; the status of banks appears to be improving and some are paying back the TARP money they received from the government; the auto industry has stopped its free fall; and in December, there was a 44 percent jump in the sale of homes – the most Stone’s seen since 2006.

Qing Li provides an excellent overview of the local housing market on his blog Lively Estate.

As someone who appreciates, well-presented data, I especially liked the following graph he provided (click the graph for full size). For example, a snapshot of the inventory in Santa Clara County this Jan 2010 reveals that the total housing inventory has fallen by about two thirds since the same time last year.

via California’s Home Inventory Shrinks to a 5-Year Low, by Jim Carlton, on Wall Street Journal Website, published 1/23/10.
SAN FRANCISCO—California’s inventory of unsold, previously owned homes shrank to a five-year low in December, in another sign that the state may be coming out of its worst housing slump in decades.
The supply of unsold single-family homes [...]

A smattering of local recent real estate news …
San Francisco Metro Area posts leading monthly gain in latest Case-Schiller report
via SJ Mercury News
Home prices rose for the sixth straight month in November, with 14 of 20 metro areas posting improvements from the month before.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday inched up 0.2 [...]

RT @LandUseXperts: Retail Contractors Expect Business to Remain Slow in 2010. http://bit.ly/5Wxwjy #CRE #
RT @borrowing: HUD Changes to Mortgage Insurance Premiums…Not as Bad as You Might … http://bit.ly/8Dd7Vn #
RT @PicAndClickCash: Biggest Real Estate Deal in History Goes Belly-Up http://bit.ly/8Qz7GQ good explanation of the stuy town debacle #
RT @TimOwensby: “No man’s credit is ever as good [...]

Part 3 – Looking beyond the trend

Once you as a data analyst have determined a trend (and I’m assuming for purposes of this article that this is a real trend and not wishful interpretation of “noise”), that’s when it really gets interesting.

It’s often not enough just to say that a key indicator is going up or down. Rather than use that as a conclusion, it is important to use that a starting point for a series of other questions that will help you understand better the matter at hand. Some of these questions might include: …

Part 2 – Understanding how to interpret Margin of Error

Different sampling choices and methods yield results with different margins of error. This is like saying that the actual answer could be higher or lower by a certain (also calculatable) amount.

For example …

Part 1 – Understanding Seasonally Adjusted Data

If you’ve ever read market reports, economic data, housing statistics, etc, you’ve probably experienced that strange sense of wondering whether the numbers in front of you are really all that meaningful or significant. Sure, they may seem impressive, but, is up really up, and is a trend really a trend? Are we really seeing what we think we’re seeing? Do our figures represent the whole picture, or are they distracting us from another truth? As one Aaron Levenstein once said, “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

Tim Owensby at the Investing Notes blog has put together a great list of top mistakes made by new real estate investors. This list makes for enjoyable reading because all of us have been there at some point or another.

Here is a brief summary of Tim’s top 10 list of no-no’s in reverse order …