Friday, May 15, 2009

Heat map showing average property listing price

When remodeling or building a custom home, it is important to understand the location where you are making this large investment.  Ideally this is an area that will make a return on your investment.  In other words, you would not necessarily build a multi-million dollar home if the median price of your neighbor's homes are under half a million.

How do you get a general idea of your real estate market without having to do a lot of in depth research? Trulia has came up with this interactive heat map that allows you to quickly see home prices and popularity trends by neighborhood or ZIP.  You can interactively sort by average listing price, average sales price, median sales price, average price/sqft and search popularity. Choose between seeing the actual prices or year-over-year (y-o-y) percentage changes on the map.  Many features used by first time and veteran home buyers can also be used as a valuable resource.

Median sales price and average listing price is a good gauge to use when considering rebuilding or remodeling your house.   I have been playing around with the heat map for Palo Alto and they have been fairly accurate.  You can see for yourself by clicking here.