Ever since I created my housing graphs web site in March 2006, Bubble Meter has been a significant source of visitors to the site. Even though the vast majority of visitors these days come from Google, Bubble Meter's links to my site are primarily responsible for my Google PageRank (with the dormant Chicago Bubble Blog and Baltimore Metro Area Housing Blog also helping out).
Thus, when David started getting blogger's fatigue, one of the factors influencing my decision to become a co-blogger here was the fact that I had a vested interest in Bubble Meter's survival. My housing bubble graphs get more incoming visitors from Bubble Meter than from any other site except Google.
Every once in a while, I will get a spike in visitors when somebody links to my housing graphs on a discussion forum. I really get intrigued when the incoming links are from a foreign language forum. For example, within the past month or two, quite a number of visitors have been coming from several Japanese discussion forums. (I wish I could read what they are saying.) However, I've never had such a bombardment of incoming visits as I've had within the last few hours.
I was checking the visitor stats for my other blog on StatCounter.com last night, when I decided to check the stats for my housing graphs web site. I was surprised to see that it had gotten over 1,000 daily page loads, which is a bit more than what it normally gets. Seeing the spike in visitors, I decided to check where they are coming from. So, I looked at the recent visitor history and was surprised to be getting almost all visitors from Patrick.net.
(Click image to enlarge.)Even more surprising, all these visits were in the last hour of the day. It appears Patrick.net linked to me at around 11:12 PM. The swarm of visitors keeps coming in. By the time you read this, even if it is before noon, Patrick.net will likely have caused more people to visit my housing graphs than I have ever had in a single day.
Anyway, I'm not really going anywhere with this post. I just thought I'd share this little bit info about watching a housing bubble web site grow.
Posts
wondering why some of the graphs are not updated - for example the Baltimore graph is still at the early 2008 point-in-time
ReplyDelete-Fresh
From mris.com:
ReplyDeleteOctober 2008 real estate statistics for Washington, DC. (That means Washington, DC, not Virginia and/or Maryland)
Total Dollar Volume Sold:
2008 = $231,350,012
2007 = $231,780,273
Percent change = -0.19%
Average Sold Price:
2008 = $558,816
2007 = $499,526
Percent change = +11.87%
Median Sold Price:
2008 = $394,450
2007 = $392,750
Percent change = +0.43 %
Total units sold:
2008 = 414
2007 = 464
Percent change = -10.78%
Average days on market:
2008 = 77
2007 = 62
Percent change = +24.19%
Average list price for Solds:
2008 = $603,004
2007 = $525,126
Percent change = + 14.83%
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteGreetings from another co-blogger (I assist at Debi's Housing Doom). The undisputed Queen of co-blogging is (was?) Tanta, but I'm proud to be a contributor.
All the best with your efforts :-)
Those DC stats would look even better if they didn't include condos. Most people I know are in agreement that fee-simple (single family, non-condo) real estate is retaining more value, relatively speaking, than condominium real estate.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for the United Van Lines 2008 migration report! DC is going to have a significant net influx of population in 2008, and it won't even include the effects of the recent election.
ReplyDeleteI called it here first.
prince of belair said...
ReplyDelete"wondering why some of the graphs are not updated - for example the Baltimore graph is still at the early 2008 point-in-time
-Fresh"
Laziness. It's as simple as that.
With the new quarterly data out, this four day weekend would be a great time for me to update the graphs.
John M said...
ReplyDelete"Greetings from another co-blogger (I assist at Debi's Housing Doom). The undisputed Queen of co-blogging is (was?) Tanta, but I'm proud to be a contributor.
All the best with your efforts :-)"
Hi John M., it's nice to meet you. How'd you get started blogging at housing doom?
Hi James,
ReplyDeleteYou can read this rather outdated bio-note on the site, but here's the Reader's Digest version.
Toward the end of my career in IT support for Canadian defence research I had a look at the US housing re-fi boom and collected information on SFAS 140, QSPEs and the stability of Fannie Mae's agency debt. On July 5, 2006, just after I retired, I posted a long summary of my concerns as a comment under Debi's article of that date, which was speculating about the prospects for FDIC once the bubble burst.
She then invited me to do a weekly series focusing on the agency debt implicit guarantee, which I term "The Safety Net that Never Was." Now today they're backing agencies up with about $600 billion on top of the $200 billion "effective guarantee," which tends to falsify my thesis.
I actually took a hiatus of nearly a year, but came back as the situation approached a climax. Now my contributions include a weekly series on the NY Fed H.4.1 numbers and some datamining of story links for the Doom sidebar.