Altos Research Reports now Available in the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area

Sometime last November I came across the Altos Resarch website on the Bloodhoundblog and was fascinated by the depth of analysis possible with their reports. By the same token, I was disappointed that the reports were not yet available in the Phoenix Metro area. Impatiently I contacted Michael Simonsen to find out if and when the data would be available for the Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area. Michael promptly returned my email letting me know that they were not quite ready yet since they just started to aggregate data for their reports.

Michael explained all the features and possibilities while we were chatting on meebo on his blog. During our chat conversation Michael surprised me by offering accssess to the Altos Reports while they were betatesting- I was thrilled and offered to help during betatesting and on several occasions I helped by comparing MLS data to the Altos reports.

Finally, Altos Research Reports are available for Phoenix and I could not resist displaying the median home price charts on the blog.

Look over at the right side of this page, and scroll down until you see the Market Stats heading with a chart right under it. That chart shows you the median price of real estate. The range of prices is on the left axis, and the time span is on the bottom.

Pause for a moment and you’ll see that the chart changes every couple of seconds, and scrolls through Phoenix, Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Glendale, Peoria, Avondale, Surprise, and Buckeye, AZ. You’ll also see a significant difference in the charted line depending on which chart you’re looking at.

For instance, Mesa and Glendale show a steady decline, Scottsdale shows a sharp drop and steep recovery, and Paradise Valley keeps going up. Of course, you have to look at the price ranges to get a clear picture.

• That decline in Glendale is $7,000 down from a high of $300,000, or about 2.3%.
• But the range for Scottsdale is only $5,000 with a high of $799,000, which is only 0.63%.
• And in Paradise Valley that increase is $150,000 but it’s on a base of $2,825,000, so that’s 5.3%.

This is just the surface and a sample of the excellent work done by Altos Research. Their real time real estate market intelligence makes fascinating reading, even for people who are not turned on by statistics. Most important, the information can help keep you ahead of the curve whether you are a home seller, buyer, or real estate investor. Their weekly market profiles show pricing trends, and the executive summary shows not just median home price trends, but also other important measures such as days on the market and inventory. So why are Altos Reports different?

A lot of systems will provide you with an estimate of a home’s price using previously sold properties as sales comparables. While this number is nice to know, it lacks in a few critical areas. For example, the sample size of comparable sales is often too small (just a handful of homes that sold over a given time period) to draw any reasonable conclusions about what the market is doing right now. In a real estate market that may change rapidly, this information is insufficient to help you make informed decisions .

In other words, most people are too focused on recent sales data versus looking at absorption rates and the trend of asking prices when trying to predict where the market is headed.

I admit it, I love this kind of in-depth information. Thanks to Altos Research, I’m able to make it available to my blog visitors, too. Just click on the chart in the sidebar and select “Please send me the Altos Research Report” in the Required Contact Reason dropdown-box and don’t forget to include your ZIP code……

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