Extremely Cool Predictive Analytics On House Prices (Trulia.com via Information Aesthetics)

http://explore.trulia.com/datavis/priceredux/Q1-2011/

One of my favorite data visualization blogs, Information Aesthetics, is featuring a new interactive map from the real estate site, Trulia.com, that should get anyone in the market for a new home (or who is selling their old one) pretty excited.

The map (and I have included a screenshot of the DC area to the right) evaluates recent home sales on a zip code by zip code basis to let you know:

• How many days a house was on the market before there was a price reduction?
• What was the average percent reduction?
• What are the odds of a second reduction?

The data set currently covers most of the US and all of the densely populated areas of the US.

Talk about actionable intel!

While this information is very useful, I hope that Trulia will work to improve the map. For example, I wonder why they decided to use zip codes instead of census tracts (which would have allowed for much finer grain analysis)?

It also makes me wonder how the Paradox of Warning will impact Trulia's product and the buyers and sellers who use it?

http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/dod/jp2_0.pdf