DATA?

[Matthew Branton]

Hi, I'm a brand new investor (investor to be I guess is more accurate)... and I am looking for good sources for market data. Home price trends, income growth, job growth etc. 

Wondering if anybody might be able to turn this into a stupid question with some really good resources... thanks.

[Trevor Ewen]

@Matthew Branton

These days, there are so many good sources of data, it's hard to know what to do with them all. Here are a few good ones:

ESRI - Tapestry (Possibly the most impressive data project out there. Personality types mapped, to zip codes!)

US Census Bureau (We're mid decade, so this grows less useful, but it's still a great constant for demographic, population and home ownership trends)

RealtyTrac (These guys do a lot of great of easily readable reports on different aspects of housing trends)

Glassdoor Blog (Jobs should be almost as important to you as housing. Tenants with jobs pay rent. It's quite interesting to look at what markets have homes under priced compared to salaries. Likely areas with good tenants and appreciation potential)

There's plenty more. For my sake, I find the most compelling data to be the untapped stuff. Real estate is still a very inefficient market, and there are many edges you can play in applying your own analysis.