Better Metrics

I've been writing about good real estate metrics for the last couple of posts, and we continue on our journey with my developing customized metric. Let's see how the first pass turns out. Let's review the goal: 1) Get an acurate picture of prices as they have changed 2) Weed out fluctuations in the median 3) Calculate it quickly 4) Eliminate volatility. So, here's the first pass (I'll be expanding on this in later editions.). This looks at quarterly calculations- as opposed to monthly - to smooth out variations. Having said that, Southborough is a very small town, and with only 65 transaction all last year, some variability is to be expected. And that's what we see.

	Southborough (SF)	Westborough (SF)	Northborough (SF)
10/1/2008-12/31/2008	-19% (limited transaction volume)	-3.00%
7/1/2008-9/30/2008	7.85%	5
4/1/2008-6/30/2008	-10.30%	-6.00%
1/1/2008-4/30/2008

So, what else do we notice? Well, how about that prices actually went up a little in the fall of last year? Kind of a surprise. And it'll be really interesting once I add some more towns, see if the trends hold, and soon I'll be tacking on the first quarter of this year to look at those too. How do I calculate it? Well, if you ask me, I might tell you - but for now it's my little secret.