Customer feature suggestion: Date Range Comparisons for AltosXplorer

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Monday, July 28. 2008

Customer feature suggestion: Date Range Comparisons for AltosXplorer

While attending the Inman Conference at the Palace Hotel last week, I had a chance to demo AltosXplorer for Altos customer Lenore Wilkas. I was trying to show Lenore some of the new stats that are available, in particular Year-over-Year Percent Price Change. While trying to describe what the stat means (it wasn't obvious to either of us, honestly) Lenore remarked that "It would be really cool if I could just do a comparison chart of price this year vs. last year instead of trying to figure out what these percentages mean.".

Of course, she was right. The human brain is much better at spatial reasoning than it is at numerical reasoning, after all. Why make our customers do the mental arithmetic when a visual representation would be so much more effective. So after a weekend of intense hacking, I am happy to announce that the feature has been added!

Access to this new feature is not available in the free version (sorry - I have a mortgage to pay too, after all) of AltosXplorer, but for all of our subscribers the feature will be visible the next time you login. To use the feature, start by adding one location to your chart. Then click on the'Options' tab where you will see two sets of options just below 'Chart Timespan' - 'Date Range' and 'Comparison Date Range Overlay':

Setting options to use date overlay and custom end date

The 'Date Range' option allows you to set the end date for your chart. Normally, all AltosCharts display the latest available data. If you instead wanted to view the price chart covering the 2007 calendar year, you would select the last date in 2007 using the date selector (2007-12-28). Because you selected '1 year' for Chart Timespan, this means your chart will cover one year of data ending on December 28th, 2007.

Next, select the comparison date range. This setting determines how far back to go for the comparison. To compare one year against another, use 'Previous Year'. Then just click on the 'Chart' tab to see the results.

Example: Sunnyvale, 94086 - 2007 prices vs. 2006 prices:

Comparing Sunnyvale prices vs. 1 year ago

The good news (for me at least) is that the market in my ZIP code seems to have recovered towards the end of 2007. Thanks to Lenore for the suggestion, and have fun testing it out. Just keep in mind that our historical data does not go much further back than about 3 years - so don't expect to be able to compare 1970 market prices to today's values.

Posted by Jason Buberel in Technology at 13:19 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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The Real Estate Market Starts Climing Again

During the past couple of years we've all seen a tremendous change in real estate in the country.
This change actually has spread all over, businesses loosing money while gas prices are extremely high.

The real estate market has become a big issue for all of us out there, we've seen many homeowners loosing their homes and struggling to find a home to rent because of their credit.

What happen to us?
Remember the bubble 4 years ago?

That's exactly the answer, from years of prosperity and times of spending, traveling and investing in stocks and real estate, we are now experiencing another bubble but this time the bubble is going in a different direction and we are wondering what to do.

So real estate was going down and it's still going down, some economists say that it will get stable in 2 years from now.

The sellers market became a buyers market, and today we all know it by now.
Investors and renters that saved their money for better days to buy to make money are in the market today, that's making the real estate market busy.

Real estate agents that learn how to change with the market also learned how to make money from the changes, these real estate professionals are making lots of money and while we are all struggling for business they're making the business.

Today you can get a home directly from the banks for almost half the price.
I've seen homeowners that are so desperate that they're willing to give their homes for free, just come and take their loan and continue their payments.

On the other hand, investors are looking to buy homes in bulk, they can get homes $.50 on the dollar.

Some banks like bank of america and countrywide are selling hundreds of homes in bulk to investors at a discount prices.

So real estate agents are busy getting hundreds of listings and reo's from banks, then they're selling these homes at a low price to future homeowners and investors.

It's definitely a buyer's market like we had in the early 90's, so if you're an investor or a homeowner.
This is your time!

#1 yanni raz (Link) on 2008-07-29 14:07 (Reply)

I enjoy following your blog! The Bend Oregon real estate market continues to slow. It looks like a good time to buy in your market.

#2 Jim Johnson (Link) on 2008-07-30 16:11 (Reply)

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