How do you analyze potential market bubbles?

[Jim Horne]

Not looking to debate whether we’re in a bubble or not, just how the pros out there do the analysis to decide for themselves when it’s time to offload a live-in flip. Here’s my situation:

- Military, using a no-money-down VA loan

- Bought a live-in flip property at $645K and invested $35K in moderate improvements

- Purchased in the Los Angeles county, South Bay Area (Redondo Beach, Torrance, etc)

- Current market value is ~$723K; lots of folks are talking about a bubble again

How would you start analyzing the market to determine if we’re nearing a market correction? What factors, trends, statistics, etc would you consider? How do you factor in “micro-markets” such as those in Los Angeles where

Property Values can vary by large swings ($100K or more) from one street to the next? What resources (websites, etc) would pull the data from?

Again, not looking for opinions on market bubbles. I’m looking for how intelligent investors quantitatively analyze and determine what what a market is doing in their local area.