Today I am doing something a bit out of the ordinary for the Houston housing market blog. Normally I have focused solely on putting out market data, writing informative articles, or more recently, posting lists of foreclosures for the Houston metro area. All of these posts were made to provide information to my readers, but today I find the need to ask my readers to help provide me with some information.
I established this blog with the idea in mind to bring more transparency to the real estate market. More recently, I have been thinking of ways that I can make this goal a reality, and it dawned on me that the best method of reaching this goal is not putting up those items that I would want to see, but disclosing the information that the general public would like to have. So, I would like everyone who has visited this site and all those that visit in the future to please take the time to either leave a comment with those items you would like to have provided to you or you can email me at my personal email address wheelocks97@hotmail.com
As I get requests in on what information people would like to see, I will log this information in series for those items that require a continual update, and I will develop articles on the more static questions that members of the public will find interesting. The way I see it is for the idea of the real estate market to become more transparent to develop into reality rather than be a pipe dream, it will have to come from an agent. This data has long been held under wraps and protected by real estate agents as though it is the only value we provide to the public. I look forward to seeing what you all have an interest in learning and hope that I can find methods of making it available in a timely manner.
February 27th, 2009 at 10:27 am
I am surprised no one has commented on this. As a potential buyer, I can’t imagine a more valuable (and marketable) contribution to the public. Everyone likes to feel like they made the best and most informed deal. Anything that contributes to that is a plus in my opinion. Anything that gets in the way of that casts a negative light on a whole profession (think car salesmen).
As a newbie to the housing market, I don’t feel like I can contribute much in the way of suggestions at the present time. However, I would think that any public historic information about previous sales of a property or similar properties in a neighborhood would be of value. Price-to-rent ratio’s for neighborhoods would be interesting as well as neighborhood crime rates, high school drop out rates, etc. Also,information about problems unique to the area such as growth faults (maybe a google map with the mapped faults (like the Long Point Fault)), flood zone and evacuation zone information.
Kudos to you for doing the right thing!
March 6th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Thanks Matt! I will work on how to make those items available without getting myself in trouble for steering. As agents we must be very careful when it comes to providing crime state or speaking negatively about a apecific area. I will ask the brokerage attorney to come up with a way to provide that information without getting accused of steering.