Real Estate Prices Visualized
If you read this blog, then you have probably have guessed that visualizing complex data sets is one of my favorite things. The NYTimes in particular has become quite adept at this - I love most of their interactive features.
This article about the housing crisis finally hitting Manhattan is excellent, and it exemplifies the problem of looking at the 20-city average of the Case-Schiller Index when you are only interested in a specific market. The index is just that - an average. But since each market behaves differently - the average doesn’t convey the regional complexities of what is happening.
That’s why this interactive graphic from the NYTimes is so fascinating - it allows you to look at each individual city against the overall average.
Source: NYTimes
I highly recommend spending some time flipping through this graphic to get an idea of how large the bubble was in some cities, and how late it was in arriving to others.
