DATASOURCE

The NWMLS (nwmls.com) is the generally considered the most authoritative source of listing and sales data available to real estate professionals, serving as the data source for consumer-facing sites such as Zillow and Redfin. It is also the source most often used by the media and analysts to determine the current state of the local real estate market. Therefore, it is the source I use for my analysis, too.

METHODOLOGY

To conduct detailed analysis, I take the following steps:

1. Search for applicable data.
2. Download search results to Excel.
3. Remove duplicates. About 11% of listings are actually listed twice, usually once in one neighborhood and a second in a separate neighborhood or once as a condo and once as a residence. This inflates/warps the data. Therefore I search for duplicates using the conditional highlight feature of Excel, manually verify to ensure the each finding is indeed a duplicate listing, then consolidate the two listings into one listing using the first entry as the primary entry.
4. Then consolidate and analyze the data using a variety of formulas, including “Countifs” and “Averageifs” and “sumifs.”
5. Review the data. If a result sees particularly anomalous (for example, if one month is suddenly 1,000% percent higher than previous months) then I’ll review the data to make sure there are not entry errors (about a fraction of 1% of the time a listing agent may forget a zero, for example; this is rare but it happens occasionally).
6. I let the data tell the story and strive for truth so that we can plan and act accordingly.

HOW OFTEN DATA IS PULLED AND REVIEWED

In general, I pull a report on active, pending and recently closed listings in Seattle and Bellevue once per week, usually on Thursday or Friday since Thursday tends to be the most active day for listing updates in NWMLS. Additionally I pull Ad Hoc reports when I’m curious about a particular data piece. My report criteria is described in every published report.

WHERE MY REPORTS AND PUBLISHED

My findings are posted on my RobInSeattle.com blog (which also automatically shares to LinkedIn), RobInSeattle substack, Rob In Seattle Facebook and Rob In Seattle Google Business Profile.