The best housing market statistics: where to find them

Housing is big business, of course. It’s really important that the average homeowner can get the best housing market statistics to drive their own decisions. In this article, you’ll find the best places to find the best statistics for a variety of your needs, from home buying to home selling.

General home price trends

Case Schiller index

If you are interested in what direction home prices are going on a national basis, you may be interested in looking at the Case Schiller 20 City Composite Index. This data sources tracks average home price for the following cities: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa and Washington, D.C. You may have to register and get a login, but looking at and downloading the data is free.

You can also look at a 10 city composite, as well as statistics on average home price for each of the 20 cities listed above.

What it tells you

What direction housing prices are going in general for the largest cities.

What it doesn’t tell you

What the rest of the housing market outside the 20 cities, or what different subsections of housing are doing, such as, apartments vs. single family homes, or homes over $1 million or less than $100,000.

Local housing trends

House price index calculator

For a more granular look into housing price trends (appreciation or depreciation) in a particular area, check out the Housing Price Index Calculator from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. This housing data lets you look at more cities than the Case Schiller, and see general appreciation for a given time period. In this example, we looked at housing appreciation in Eugene-Springfield, OR for a five year period starting 4^th quarter 2013 to 2018:

What it tells you

Home appreciation averages for a wide variety of areas, and all states

What it doesn’t tell you

It doesn’t tell you what any individual home is doing in terms of appreciation. As it says under the tool, “it does not project the actual value of any particular house. Rather, it projects what a given house purchased at a point in time would be worth today if it appreciated at the average appreciation rate of all homes in the area.”

Zillow

Zillow is, for sure, a company that has used data as a core strategy. Take the cursed Zillow Zestimate for example. The bain of home sellers. On the other hand, their focus on data can be used to sift and sort housing trends, similar to the examples above. Take a look at their Local Market Reports to see average home prices, trends, and predictions for the next year.

What it tells you

Based on Zillow’s data, combined with other sources like the Case Schiller and HPI, it tells you a number of statistics for 50 cities and also the percentage homes that are negative equity.

What it doesn’t tell you

It doesn’t give you a way to look at any area, just main metropolitan ones. Still, very useful source for housing market statistics.

Selling and buying trends

National Association of Realtors (NAR)

NAR maintains a page for Research Reports and Housing Statistics. Both of these sections can be useful as data sources for home buyers, owners and sellers. For an easy to read summary of current buying trends, check out the Research Reports page, and view their Realtors Confidence Index, a “key indicator of housing market strength based on a monthly survey sent to over 50,000 real estate practitioners”.

What it tells you

What the “feet on the street”, i.e. realtors, are saying about where demand is weak, where it is strong, average days on the market, characteristics of buyers, percent of cash sales, and more. It gives you a good qualitative look at where the housing market is.

What it doesn’t tell you

As it is reporting real estate agent sentiment, it isn’t providing raw data regarding actual housing data as the sources above. Still, a very interesting read and worthy of exploring.

How to find appreciation values for individual homes

Often, the most important piece of data is what an individual home is doing in terms of appreciation. The reason the sources above don’t cover individual home value data is because you don’t actually know what a home is valued today until someone pays that amount for it! However, you can do the work that appraisers do, for free, with a little sleuthing.

To find out how to value your own home or a home you are looking to purchase, get our handy and comprehensive guide on how to find the value of any home.