One of the great draws of studying the housing market for an economist like me is the availability of data. Every month, price indices, existing home sales, housing starts and sentiment surveys take center stage in the evaluation of housing market conditions. Economists supplement housing statistics with other economic indicators, like interest rates, job creation numbers or GDP, that give context to the underlying causes of real estate activity. These numbers go into complex models that try to predict the future direction of the housing market and its contribution to the economy as a whole.
Listening to economists is a great way to understand the housing market. But what about listening to real estate agents? The hallmark of a great real estate agent, as many of you who’ve bought or sold a home know, is detailed local market expertise and insider insights based on interactions with clients, day in and day out.
Redfin is the only company that collects and tracks data from its own real estate agents across the country at scale — data about the housing market that economists have never had before. Weeks and months before home sales roll up into publicly available data, Redfin knows whether home tours or offers made have increased or decreased. We know how many offers were accepted, and how many were competitive. Redfin data scientists built an algorithm to identify homes that are likely to sell quickly and estimate how many days each home will be on the market. What’s more, we collect individual insights from Redfin agents to help us understand the stories behind the numbers, whether it’s buyers submitting offer “letters” in video form or families sacrificing space for an urban lifestyle.
Combining tried-and-true housing market data with the human side of the business is what I do at Redfin as chief economist. Our data scientists and real estate agents work together to deliver a real-time assessment of what’s going on in the housing market. And in this space, my mission is to give you deeper insight on the economics of the housing market based on real-time activity of thousands of buyers and sellers around the country.
The truth about statistics is that they are just as interesting for what they conceal as what they reveal. Data on home sales don’t report how many offers those clients had to make before settling into their dream homes; we show this in our offer insights. Price indices can’t show anecdotes about the new car that came with the house or the free football tickets that the buyer included in the offer to the seller; we collect these types of stories in our agent surveys. Inventory data fail to show the condition and quality of homes on the market; we reveal that in tour insights. Our technology helps us make sense of statistics through the collection and analysis of real-world experiences at scale.
My fascination with housing it not just about data, but also about the stories from my real estate agent colleagues and the customers they serve that bring the data to life. Matching our big data world with real people making the biggest transactions of their lives leads to a treasure trove of topics about which to write. I am excited to get started.
