Hi all, My name is Stewart, and i'm new to this forum.
I thought some of you here might be interested in a website I have put together called "The 'BurbWatch Project". Essentially, it is a free-to-use site featuring publicly available information (currently all sourced from the internet); example sites where I regularly collect information are: realestate.com.au, refindhouseprices.com, homehound.com.au (charts pending), SQM Research and RPData … …But only using free, readily-available, public information, as I have been trying to see what the "Average Joe" can find out about property supply in Australia.
The site tracks property supply trends in Australia as a whole, but also for each state and territory in Australia. Data are presented as numerous charts – and there is currently around 100 separate charts on the site, breaking down and presenting various aspects of property supply, even with some limited statistical analysis.
I have been collecting data since September 2010 – though I wish I had been doing it longer, as it proved to be a fruitful and enlightening venture. Note: i'm a Process and Chemical Engineer, so the way I present and break-down the data might be a little different to what to what you are used to…I choose to view it as a system, with signals of various types that present aspects of its character, with the interaction between signals being noteworthy.
Additionally, the site is not intended nor, I believe, presented as necessarily bullish or bearish on Property – I have tried to be fairly neutral in my presentation of the data (eg. having little to no commentary), whilst being sensitive to how the data might shed light on what property-supply is doing in the current macro-economic context.
You can find out more about the site here: http://burbwatch.wordpress.com/about/
Or you can just jump straight to the site, here: http://burbwatch.wordpress.com/
If it's OK with people, I hope to post regular (every 1-2 weeks) updates here at this forum, when they occur (as I do a several other property and economics forums)… I hope you find The 'BurbWatch Project both interesting and enlightening!
Regards,
Stewart
Hi Stewart
Thanks for sharing, it looks good. Another useful source for carrying out DD.
Cheers
Jamie
Jamie Moore | Pass Go Home Loans Pty Ltd
http://www.passgo.com.au
Email Me | Phone MeMortgage Broker assisting clients Australia wide Email: [email protected]
Jamie M wrote:Hi StewartThanks for sharing, it looks good. Another useful source for carrying out DD.
Cheers
Jamie
Thanks, Jamie – glad you like the site; it’s a pleasure to help!
‘Twas the whole purpose of the site: to inform more people in ways not already informed.
Cheers,
StewartHi all,
Sorry it’s been about 4 weeks since the last update – life has been demanding elsewhere, and I’ve found it hard to justify allocating spare time to updating BurbWatch.
But, nonetheless! I have been faithfully collecting all the data at all the same intervals, and am now able to present you with the updated charts, for your information.
UPDATED:
– All previously existing chart, for all states and territories, and Australia-Total
NEW:
– I’ve developed a correlative index, based on some new data I have sourced (again, publically available) and have been collecting since mid-February 2011, and have called the new Index the “Buyer Price Reduction Responsivity Index”…long name, simple idea: it considers the numbers of properties that have been sold in a given period, compared to the number of properties on the market, and also considers the frequency/density of price reduction instances in that same period. I have then combined those quantities to yield a correlative index, which gives a relative idea of how buyers are actively responding to price reductions. In that sense, it also gives a relative indication of the degree of “deflationary mindset” of buyers in the market….are they responding? Are the price reductions “working”? And how well, compared to other periods? I’m quite excited about what this new Index is revealing about such trends within states and also between states…pity I didn’t source all the necessary data earlier. Oh well.
Enjoy,
Stewart
Plenty of stuff to report this update…
UPDATED:
– All BurbWatch charts for all states and territories, as well as Australia.
NEW:
– All charts are now in PNG format (better quality), instead of the former JPG format. Thankyou to several knowledgable people for making the suggestion to switch. The images/charts should now present a little more clearly and quickly on the page and when clicked to maximise to full-screen.
– Indexed Sales and Rental Listings charts for realestate.com.au based data. The raw listings numbers are still presented in the former charts, but these new indexed listings charts (reference = 100) give a better idea of the relative movements of the sales and rental listings; they are also a “2-in-1? chart, from the point of view that they provide listings and cumulative changes on the one chart (might make the cumulative chart redundant…we’ll see…)
– Charts for each state’s fraction of sales and rent listings as a fraction of the Australian total (realestate.com.au based data). Gives a clearer, more comparative idea of how each state is contributing to the Australian total for sales and rental listings (compared to just raw or indexed listings). Accordingly, these charts give an idea of how the relative (listing-based) stress is trending for each state – is their contribution the the national total decreasing, increasing, or flatlining? More info to help paint a clearer picture.
– Vendor Price Distributions – very excited about this one!! I have been wanting to get a better idea of property price distributions, and it is very difficult indeed. Median and average reporting, on its own, does not really give a very good picture of the distribution of prices in the market. Now, as actual sold price distribution data is actually quite difficult to come by (though there is some public, free info out there), Vendor/Asking Price data is relatively easy to come by. Hence, I have started to collect and chart the prices being asked for on various real estate website for state, starting with realestate.com.au; and am presenting them as raw-data distributions, for your interest (bar charts of the Frequency (%) contributions for each selected price category, for each state). You will get a better idea of the peaks, troughs and spreads of prices within and between states. Over time, I will also be presenting time-series of these charts, so you can see how the distributions shift over time. The provided Australian chart (line chart) allows you to visually compare the distributions of Vendor Prices between states. I hope this is enlightening, and you can appreciate how median and average -type reporting is somewhat useful, but is best when viewed as a distribution, in visual context! (eg. How well does the reported median and/or average figure(s) actually represent the whole population of prices? (etc)) Presenting Vendor Price Distributions is not the same as presenting actual sold prices, but the presentation of the distributions, as well as presentations of the distributions of over time and across states, will give a better picture of what is actually occurring in all parts of the Australian property market.
NOTEWORTHY:
– http://www.refindhouseprices.com – this site has stalled for some reason. It no provides updates for any of the stats of the front/home page. Quite disappointing, as data from here was used extensively by BurbWatch. I have tried contacting the webmaster/owner(s) via a number of avenues to let them know the site was down, but to no avail – either resulting in failure to contact, or failure to respond from 3rd parties. If anyone knows how to contact the operators/webmasters/owners, then please do so, and even please let me know, as I am very interested in what this site has to offer. Such as shame!
– Due to the http://www.refindhouseprices.com issue, described above, some of the charts have not updated (because there is not any reliable updated data!). Hence, the charts are still presented, but they are, at this time of writing, about a week out of date. Sorry, I hope it resolves…
– I have restructured the BurbWatch WordPress.com site. I found the former layout was getting messy, cluttered, and laborious to navigate (a lot of scrolling!). So I have used the introduction of the Vendor Price Distributions as an excuse to setup a basic drop-down menu system at the top of the site. Hopefully you like it. Let me know; make some suggestions.
– Some of the SQM and RPData charts have been removed until I put together updates. Shouldn’t be too long.
I hope you enjoy the update.
Feel free to comment and make suggestion, especially on the new changes. I’ll do my best to consider and implement them.
Regards and Thanks For Visiting,
Stewart
Well done, Stewart (processdude)!
A super effort and thanks for the updates.
I get annoyed when web sites like refindhouseprices refuse to alert traffic to their site that there are issues related to updating content. Good on you for trying to contact them. Seems they could'nt care less
Small Update:
http://www.refindhouseprices.com is up and running again – hopefully my pestering paid off!
However, it seems something is different with the site, at least for the time being (stats are quite different from a few weeks ago, unless a very dramatic change has occurred in the housing market, which I have not picked up to the same extent in some other metrics I track…).
Personally, I will be waiting about a week before I start re-collecting data from here, in order to let the site’s changes “settle” somewhat.
Cheers,
StewartHi all,
I’ve finally done another update!
Sorry it’s taken so long.
Nonetheless, here are some details on the update.
NOTEWORTHY
For those of you that don’t know already, for the sake of time (mainly), I have decided to “move” the site from here (The ‘BurbWatch Project) to a new trial site (The BurbWatch Project – Australia).
I will be keeping this site for announcing updates, notes on updates, other mentionables…so this WordPress site will not be abandoned, but has been superceded for the presentation of the charts.
But don’t get me wrong – the current The BurbWatch Project – Australia site is only a trial site – and, though I think it is “pretty good”, there are already things I don’t like about it! (For example, it’s a Flash-based site, which means that I/others can’t easily dynamically link to a particular chart for, say, discussion on a real-estate forum. Bit of a bummer. But I am working on it (eg. I am considering using Google charts and an online database to provide a linkable – and funky and interactive! – chart. Such as seen in the two following links: here, and here).
UPDATED
All the normal state and national charts
NEW
Firstly – I’ve included a ~10 months time-series on Share Accommodation Listings (Indexed) from homehound.com.au . Many have been wondering what has been happening here…and I have been collecting some data! Available only for Australia as a whole at the moment. Enjoy.
Next, all the rest of the new charts are actually in the relatively new “Price Charts” section.
Some of you may remember that I’ve become vocal about the benefits of displaying price data first as a “Price Distribution”, and THEN as a point-value metric (eg. median or average price)…rather than just a point-value metric. I believe it is a more holistic (and thus better) way of presenting the data, as it provides a fairly clear way of presenting the “raw” data with minimal processing, and allows the viewer to be better informed, and better make up their own mind about what the data do and do not mean.
So, I have taken it upon myself to present ASKING/VENDOR prices as Price Distributions – at the moment just based on realestate.com.au data. The distribution is based on what I call a “Price Category” – eg. $50K-$100K; and, $650K-$700K).
Both the quantity (number of listings) and relative frequency (% of listings) for a given price-category are provided on separate charts.
HOWEVER…let me emphasise again that this is ASKING or VENDOR price data – NOT sold price data! Please do not get the two confused! Asking/Vendor Price data and trends are an INDICATOR of sold-price trends…but, honestly, I am not yet sure if it are a leading or lagging indicator. That remains to be seen.
Charts for this data are produced for each release (which will hopefully be monthly…!), AND will also be provided on a time-series chart, which shows the trends for selected months/quarters, such that the viewer can VISUALLY appreciate the trends over time (eg. is the profile, or weight, of the Vendor Price sliding up or down the price scale? And how quickly?)
Again, such visualisation of the WHOLE PROFILE of price data (in this case, Vendor Prices) allows the viewer to better appreciate just how accurate or significant (or not) a subsequent point-value metric (eg. price index) is for a given data set.
But onto the next new item…
Based on this realestate.com.au Vendor Price data, I have also developed a basic “Vendor Price Index”…since we are simply creatures and DO like simple point-value metrics! …but at least i have provided the price-distributions as well, eh? It is, really, just a very simple (and more limited) way of expressing the visual data. Perhaps the two together are a good team.
However, keep in mind that the BurbWatch Vendor Price Index is actually a (wait for it): Trimmed Weighted-Average Category-Midpoint Contribution Price Index …
That all basically means the following:
– “Trimmed” – since the first price category ($0K-$50K) and the last category ($10,000K+) are, by inspection, full of far more errors and misallocations than other price-categories, I have removed them from the calculation of the Vendor Price Index. This is especially relevant, since, given their internally high-level of errors, their place at the extremes of the distribution, and their actually relatively low contribution to the total quantity of listings, they would disproportionately swing the price index.
– “Weighted-Average” – This means that a price-category’s contribution to the final indexed price result depends on its proportional contribution to the total listings. For example, if a category has 10,000 listings, and the total for the state/region is 50,000, then (10,000/50,000) x 100 = 20% of the “Price Category Midpoint” value (explained below) is contributed to the total
– “Category-Midpoint” – For example, if we consider the category $550K-$600K”, then the “category midpoint” would be the halfway point of the price category – which in this example case is $575K. With this sort of method, it is important that the price categories are as finely divided as possible, such that the category-midpoint “well represents” (ie. is close to both ends of) the actual price-category. I have used the standard realestate.com.au divisions, many of which are $50K and $100K apart, so I am quite comfortable with the “accuracy” with which the category midpoint represents the majority of price-categories.
– Hence, the “BurbWatch Vendor Price Index” should provide a rough, but fairly stable (wrt volatility), reasonably accurate (the data set of realestate.com.au is very good!) and fairly representative way of generally expressing movement in the Vendor Price profile….but remember to consider it in light of the Vendor Price Distribution!! (which gives the Index its context!!)
OK all…I hope that was worth reading.
Enjoy this next installment of BurbWatch, and I look forward to your next visit and/or communication!
Cheers,
Stewart
FYI
I’ll now start posting the BurbWatch Chart Pack as part of the regular updates, for anyone that is interested in having direct access the the charts.
The first can be downloaded from here: BurbWatch Chart Pack (as at 17-8-2011)
Cheers,
StewartAll,
FYI
The BurbWatch Project – Australia has been updated – this is the first chart update in some 9-12 months!
Apologies…it has been a busy year for me and my family (and still is, honestly…).
You can download the BurbWatch chart pack HERE.
The official BurbWatch WordPress Blog has some commentary around this latest update, as there has been, I believe, both some improvements and rationalisations.
Enjoy.
Regards,
Stewart
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