Regarding some of the questions, this is Freddie Mac's description of its methodology which does seem as a reliable means of having some idea of home price movement: "The Freddie Mac House Price Index (FMHPISM) provides a measure of typical price inflation for houses within the U.S. ...Series are available at three levels of geographical aggregation: Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), state, and national.

Dave's methodology is great.  

One just needs to go to Rome and see where modern Rome is built on top of ancient Rome.

This "study" made a lot of headlines recently, for example, but if you actually look at the research methodology, it is extremely flawed.

Foldvary predicted the real estate crash in 2006 using this same methodology. 

If someone offered to sell you a car for $500, you would (hopefully) rightly wonder just what kind of ancient and horrible junk it was; the same is true of land costs that sound far, far, far too good to be true in a place where one would expect it to cost at least 10 times that.Also, have you included earthquake insurance in your estimates? 

In my area, homes that were built before 2000 are considered ancient, therefore, repair costs differ from one area to the next.

Back then slavery was common and not forced like it was during modern times.You volunteer as a slave back then and when your time as a slave was up you were released from your duties and went on with your business.So slavery back during ancient times was beneficial and common.Now something too think about.

RCG has trained a number of MLO firms over several states in their structural and compliance responsibilities successfully (meaning agreement by state regulators as to the methodology), but most are not knowledgeable enough to transact the process correctly.There is a confrontation about to happen with two MLO firms in California that are advertising what you are suggesting without the structure being correct, that will include RCG and two independent California law firms later this month.

Here again this is my methodology, I'll never state that's it's right but it has provides me leverage to account for unforeseen expense after closings.