I rely on the major sales-price indexes – Case-Shiller, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and CoreLogic – as much as the next guy (or the next housing economist, anyway). They’re essential for understanding where home prices have been going. But they come out between five and eight weeks after each month ends, and the sales prices they report are rooted in asking prices set two or three months earlier. Doing these sales-price indexes right takes time – but buyers, sellers, investors and policymakers need to know what’s happening in the housing market now.

Starting today, we’re closing this gap. The Trulia Price Monitor and the Trulia Rent Monitor show every month what’s happening to asking prices and rents almost in real-time. By focusing on asking prices and releasing each month’s Monitors just days after each month ends, we can detect price movements at least three months before the major sales-price indexes do.

What are the Trulia Price Monitor and Trulia Rent Monitor?
To create the Trulia Price Monitor and Trulia Rent Monitor, we take all the for-sale homes and rentals ever listed on Trulia.com and calculate how asking prices and rents changed month by month. Rather than simply tracking the average or median, we adjust for the changing composition of homes that are listed each month. Therefore, these Monitors reflect the price and rent trends for similar homes in similar neighborhoods over time. For the Trulia Price Monitor, we also account for the regular seasonal fluctuations in asking prices in order to reveal the underlying trend in prices.

The Trulia Price Monitor differs from the major sales-price indexes in important ways.

First, we focus on asking prices. Final asking prices lead sales prices by about two or three months, reflecting the time that homes are typically on the market. In 2011, the Trulia Price Monitor’s national month-on-month changes track the seasonally-adjusted month-on-month changes in Case-Shiller and FHFA two months later.  Asking prices, however, are NOT a perfect predictor of sales prices: the final sales price for a home can be above or below asking, and some listed homes might not sell. Asking prices and sales prices each have their advantages for understanding the housing market: asking prices have the advantage of showing current market conditions and trends, but sales prices are the best guide to historical and long-term trends in the housing market.

Second, the Trulia Price Monitor uses a different statistical approach: a “hedonic” rather than “repeat-sales” method. The explanation gets technical pretty quickly, but we’ve provided all the details in our FAQs.

Here’s what to expect from us: in the first few days of each month, we will publish price and rent trends for the previous month, for the nation as a whole and for the largest metro areas (for prices, the 100 largest; for rents, most of the 100 largest). We report monthly, quarterly and yearly changes nationally, plus quarterly and yearly changes at the metro-level. Our approach lets us dig deep: in the future, we’ll look at price trends for single-family homes versus condos; homes with one, two and three or more bedrooms; downtown versus suburban trends; and more. Have some other comparison that you’d like us to make? Email us and let us know.

Madness! Asking Home Prices Moved Up in March
Let’s get to the facts. Nationally, asking prices on for-sale homes were 1.4% higher in March than one quarter ago. Prices increased month over month by 0.9% in March and 0.6% in February. What we found through the Monitor is that asking prices had been declining prior to February and reached a low in January 2012. Throughout 2011, asking prices rose slightly in several months of the year, but never more than 0.2% in a month. Asking prices in March were 0.7% below their level one year earlier.

One thing to keep in mind — because the Trulia Price Monitor is seasonally adjusted, these monthly and quarterly increases are on top of typical springtime price jumps. Without adjusting for seasonality, asking prices rose 2.4% quarter over quarter.

Asking Home Prices Are Looking Up for the Sunshine State
But all housing is local. On the up side, the Trulia Price Monitor revealed that asking prices rose year over year in all large Florida metros, and fastest in Cape Coral-Fort Myers and Miami. Asking prices also rose in Phoenix, Pittsburgh and the Detroit area. Meanwhile, local housing markets in much of the West continue to struggle. Prices fell most in Tacoma and Seattle, followed by Sacramento and Las Vegas. All large California metros saw year-over-year price declines. Just check out this metro-level map  and see for yourself. Florida and Michigan are looking mighty green (which means rising prices) whereas California is in the red (which means falling prices).

Why do we see price increases in some places and price declines in others? As a general rule, prices are now rising faster in places where prices fell more during the bust and where vacancy rates are higher. In other words, many of the local price increases are bouncebacks: Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Miami and Phoenix all saw huge price drops after the bubble burst and big increases in asking prices this past year. But there are exceptions: Las Vegas prices continue to fall, even after years of steep price declines.

Note: Rankings based on the year-over-year changes in asking price among the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Want to see the full list of price and rent changes for all 100 metros? You can download it here.

No Wonder Your Landlord is Smiling
What about rentals? Nationally, rents rose by 5.0% year on year: unlike prices, rents have been moving steadily upward. During the recession, some owners lost their homes and became renters instead; also, many younger adults deferred the leap from renting to owning. Strong rental demand, combined with little new rental construction, pushed rents higher.

Asking rents rose over the past year in almost all large metro areas included in the Trulia Rent Monitor – regardless of whether asking home prices were going up or down. For example, rents rose strongly in Miami (12.1%) and Denver (9.9%), where for-sale prices also increased. Meanwhile, rental affordability declined in places where rents rose while prices fell, most notably in San Francisco (rents up 11.1%), Seattle (9.7%), San Jose (9.4%) and Boston (9.2%). As for the very largest metros, rents rose 6.2% in New York and 6.1% in Chicago, but only 0.6% in Los Angeles.

So what drives rent trends? Employment growth matters most. San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, San Jose and Austin all had high year-on-year employment growth (through February 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) and big rent increases.

Is This Bounceback Here To Stay?
Will these price and rent increases continue? Continued job growth plus declining inventories equal more buyers chasing fewer homes – and therefore higher prices. The big wildcard for prices is the next wave of foreclosures. The robo-signing settlement will accelerate foreclosures, which will ultimately depress prices in neighborhoods where foreclosures are concentrated. Rents this year depend on both job growth and new construction: last year builders broke ground on many multi-family buildings, which should come to market later this year and dampen rent increases.

Want to be the first to know how foreclosures, construction and jobs are affecting prices and rents in April? Come back in early May, when we’ll release the April 2012 Trulia Price Monitor and Trulia Rent Monitor.

On the long road of housing recovery, we’re all kids in the back seat wondering: are we there yet? After years of bad news about the housing market, it’s hard to remember what “normal” looks like.

This month Trulia kicks off the Housing Barometer, a quick review of three key monthly indicators of housing recovery: new construction starts (Census), existing-home sales (NAR), and the delinquency-plus-foreclosure rate (LPS). For each indicator, we checked how bad the numbers got at their worst, and then looked even further back in time, before the bubble, to remind ourselves what “normal” looked like. We’re not trying to predict what the new normal will be in the future – we’re just eyeballing the past in order to put this month’s housing data into context.

Here’s what the February data, released last week, show:

— Construction starts: 22% of the way back from their low in Apr 2009 toward their normal level.
— Existing home sales: 47% of the way back from their low in Nov 2008 toward normal.
— Delinquency + foreclosure rate: 32% of the way back from their high in Jan 2010 toward normal.

To get to a single number that’s easy to remember and track over time, we just average these three percentages together. If all three indicators were at their worst, the barometer would be at 0%; if all were back to normal, the barometer would be at 100%. The February 2012 data puts us at 34%: in other words, the housing market is one-third of the way back to normal.

So, are we there yet? No. We still have a long way to go. How long will it take us to get there? Using the same method and measures, one year ago the market was 16% of the way back to normal, which means we’ve ticked up 18 points in the past year. If we continue to drive at this same pace of 18 points a year, we’ll get from 34% today to 100% in late 2015. Kids, sit tight…it’s going to be awhile.

Since the housing bubble burst, it seems like everyone and their mother can’t stop talking about what a great time it is right now to buy a home, but how good is it really? After years of seeing home prices drop like flies and rental markets tightening up better than pair of Spanx, it’s safe to say that homeownership is very affordable almost everywhere. In fact, it is now cheaper to buy than to rent in 98 of the 100 most populous metros – including (shocker!) pricey places to live like New York, Los Angeles and Boston.

Says who you ask? Our Trulia’s Winter 2012 Rent vs Buy Index – that’s who! To give you a little bit of background, this Index is what we use to figure out whether buying a home or renting in a given metro is easier on the pocketbook. To do this, we look at asking prices for rentals and homes for-sale on Trulia.com while also factoring other costs like taxes, insurance and maintenance, etc.

Just see for yourself. After ranking all the metros (marked as dots in the chart below) in order of where buying is most expensive relative to renting, notice that the two metros at the top of the list —Honolulu and San Francisco — are no where close to being orange, let alone being in the red (read: renting is cheaper relative to buying). At best, they are a nice mustard yellow, which means that the asking price between renting and buying isn’t all that different. Instead, what really matters if you’re only doing a basic cost comparison is (1) your tax bracket and whether you can benefit from the mortgage interest deduction and (2) how long you actually plan to live in the house.

Start Spreading The News, I’m Leaving NYC For The Suburbs Today
Truth be told, it won’t surprise anyone to say that you need to be making some serious bank in order to be a Manhattan homeowner. Housing crisis or no housing crisis, it’s still going to be a really expensive place to live compared to pretty much anywhere else in the U.S. of A. However, if you can let go of Manhattan city living (like Miranda in “Sex and the City” did), then you might be pleasantly surprised to know that buying a home is definitely doable. You just got to look even further than Brooklyn and Staten Island (priced-out Manhattanites have bid up home values in many neighborhoods…boo! hiss!). How far? Think Queens, the Bronx and other nearby suburban counties.

NOTE: The lists above rank the major metros where renting a home is most expensive relative to buying, and vice-versa. Price-to-rent ratios that are 15 and under indicate buying is less expensive than renting, while ratios that are 20 or higher indicate renting is less expensive than buying. Between 15 and 20, the rent-versus-buy calculation depends on tax deductions and other personal circumstances.

Left My Heart In San Francisco…As I Move To The East Bay
When it comes to buying a home in the SF Bay Area, you’re going to have to pay a pretty penny as compared to renting to do so in San Francisco, the Peninsula (San Mateo County) and in the South Bay (Santa Clara County). You’re more likely to get a better deal once you cross the Bay Bridge and head to the East Bay (Alameda County and Contra Costa County). That’s because there’s been more empty homes and foreclosures on that side of the bay.

Buying Beats Renting 99 Miles From LA, But Not Always
Generally speaking, homeownership in SoCal gets pricier as you move away from the coast towards the desert, but this “rule” is by no means set in stone. There are a couple of big exceptions: Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley. These two real estate markets are really far from the beach, but are crazy expensive places to buy a home as compared to renting. Heh, go figure.

If You’re Living in Chicago, It’s Cheaper to Buy vs. Rent
No matter how you slice and dice it, being a homeowner in Chicago is much more affordable than being a renter. Even in the heart of the windy city (the Loop and Near North Side), buying is relatively cheaper than buying than in many suburbs of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

To check out the all the findings from the report, check out the Slideshare deck below.

The housing market rides the seasons.  Year in and year out, market activity has predictable ups and downs. Sometimes those seasonal patterns are hard to see when longer-term trends (like plummeting housing prices) or one-off events (like the homebuyer tax credit) drive movements in prices, sales and other housing indicators. But seasonal patterns are there, even when they’re beneath the surface.

To understand the effects of long-term trends or one-time events on the market, housing wonks like to “seasonally adjust” data. That means we strip out the regular seasonal patterns in order to highlight trends or events. This is useful for deciding whether the market is really in recovery or assessing the impact of a housing policy.

But these seasonal patterns help show us what’s really going on in the housing market, which is important because they give us hints about when we should search, list, buy, sell or build. In this post, I look at five measures of housing activity: search activity (Trulia), asking prices (Trulia), new construction starts (Census), existing home sales (NAR) and housing inventory (deptofnumbers.com).

Starts and Sales Swing with the Seasons
New construction starts and existing home sales fluctuate more throughout the year than other housing activities. The chart below shows that sales are typically 29% above their annual average in June and 31% below their annual average in January. Construction starts also swing 25% above and below their annual average over the year. No wonder builders and agents say theirs are seasonal businesses. Other activities float rather than swing with the seasons. Search activity rises 12% above its annual average in March. But inventories stay within 10% of their annual average every month, and asking prices stay within 5% of their annual average every month (see note below on asking prices).

The Spring Thaw Comes First to Buyers, then to Sellers
As the market comes out of winter hibernation, buyers wake up first. The table below shows when each measure hits its highs and lows. In the winter, all activity rests: searches, prices, starts, sales and inventories all slide to their yearly low in December or January.  Life resumes in March, as search activity pops up and stays above normal through August. Prices rise too and reach their annual high in May. Summer has endings and beginnings: sales peak in June, as do new construction starts. But inventory keeps climbing as some sellers miss the sales peak, topping out in July and August.

What do these patterns tell us? Homebuyers are a little ahead of sellers. Asking prices peak at the start of the season, so demand appears to rise ahead of supply. As supply catches up, prices ease back down and sales peak. After that, inventories build up a bit further through the summer.
High-Season Comes Stronger and Later in the North
Harsh climates fuel seasonality. It’s harder to build homes in the snow, and a lot less fun to go to open houses (or host them). Construction starts in the Midwest are 2.5 times higher in June than in January, but in the South, construction starts are only 50% higher at the summer peak than at the winter low. Sales seasonality too is stronger in the Midwest and Northeast than in the South and West.

The best time to buy or sell? Depends on where you are. If you want to buy when inventory swells (or want to avoid those months for selling), inventory peaks in the summer across most of the country, but not in the Sunbelt. In Miami, Tampa and Orlando, inventory peaks in March; Las Vegas inventory peaks in October, and Phoenix inventory peaks in December – just in time to buy a home for Christmas.

Looking to buy low or sell high? Nationally, asking prices peak in May and bottom in December, so sellers can get top dollar in the spring, while buyers can find bargains later in the year. In other words, buyers should be more patient than they are, while sellers should move faster to get their home on the market.  But prices tend to peak earlier in the South, as the map below shows, and later in the North, so the best deals come later in the year the farther North you are. And the harshest climates create the biggest swings: prices for similar homes vary more with the seasons in Minnesota, Illinois and Maine than in any other state.

Technical Details:

— All data presented are the seasonal factors from the Census X-12 seasonal adjustment model, applied to at least five years of unadjusted raw data from each source. As each data source allows, I estimated separate seasonal factors for each metro, state, or region as well as for the US overall.

— Asking-price data from Trulia.com are adjusted for housing characteristics and neighborhood attributes. Therefore, the seasonal pattern in asking prices is not affected by seasonal changes in the types of homes that get listed.

When we first started this blog nearly a year ago, our goal was to make our plethora of complex housing data easier to digest and even more useful through cool interactive data visualizations. Since then, we’ve evolved to become even more than that.

Bringing together a team of creative design technologists, super-smart data analysts and savvy writers as well as our awesome Chief Economist Jed Kolko, we’re investigating a wider range of unconventional housing trends — from measuring housing misery in different states to tracking the window shopping activity of European house hunters. We’re also breaking down current events, new housing policies and local market data — such as the robo-signing settlement and the monthly jobs report – to help translate what really matters to people who are looking for a new home. Lastly, we continue to make good on our original promise to deliver visual insights – which has included visualizations that shed light on where and when people are looking for homes.

So to reflect our evolution as a blog, we’ve changed our names to Trulia Trends and updated our mission statement. Ta-da!

And with that, here’s to many more years of sharing trends through data, design and insights!