PolicyMap News

Wealthier neighborhoods that avoided subprime borrowing will be hurt in the new year as the downturn weakens even healthy markets

By Prashant Gopal

2008 was the year that subprime borrowers and speculators got hurt by the real estate crisis. 2009 could be when everyone else gets hit.

Until now, the nation’s most serious home price declines have been in low-cost markets that were dominated by subprime mortgages, and in overbuilt markets such as Florida, California, and Las Vegas, where residential values are sliding fast toward pre-housing boom levels.

The Commerce Dept. reported Dec. 23 that November new-home sales in the U.S. fell to their lowest level in 17 years, down 35.3% compared with November 2007. And the outlook is even bleaker. The same day, Credit Suisse (CS) forecast that more than 8 million homes will go into foreclosure over the next four years, or approximately 16% of all U.S. households with mortgages.

That’s because the big story in 2009 could be that, with the deepening recession and mounting job losses, serious housing troubles could infect wealthier communities and markets that were just beginning to stabilize this summer before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15 sparked the most serious financial turmoil in decades. In fact, according to online real estate research firm HousingPredictor.com, based in Destin, Fla., housing prices nationwide will fall 12.5% next year, compared with an estimated 11.1% this year.

Housing and mortgage problems pushed the nation into a recession that could now amplify, draw out, and expand the reach of the housing declines.

Manhattan Hit, Too

Take Manhattan, for example, where condo and co-op prices soared years after housing bubbles in most other major cities popped. New York City’s real estate market was bolstered by residents who were still earning sky-high Wall Street bonuses and by a weak dollar that attracted overseas bargain hunters.

Now that the dollar has strengthened, the economic woes have spread to potential New York home buyers across the globe, and thousands of New York financial professionals are collecting severance. Manhattan apartment prices, as a result, have dropped as much as 20% since the summer, said Jonathan Miller, president and chief executive officer of real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Miller’s analysis is based on contracts signed in recent months, rather than actual closings.

“Mid-september was a milestone,” Miller said. “That’s where you saw a pronounced slowdown in transaction volume.”

HousingPredictor.com is projecting a 19.4% decline in Manhattan home prices in 2009. And Moody’s Economy.com is predicting that condo prices in New York City, Northern New Jersey, and Westchester County will fall 29% by the fourth quarter of next year.

“Nationally, we think this recession is going to be worse than anything we’ve seen in 40 years,” said Marisa DiNatale, senior economist for Moody’s Economy.com. “If the economy gets that bad, then you will start to see foreclosures in Manhattan as well.”

(more…)

Future of Real Estate Marketing.com, recently brought attention to, as he describes, a “pretty cool” new site called PolicyMap.com ; the site offers:

“…over 4,000 indicators related to demographics, real estate, crime, health, schools, housing affordability, employment, energy, and public investments.” where you can ” Search any location by address, census tract, county, state, zip code, school district, or Congressional district ” .

The information can be viewed in well designed multi-colored maps where you can ” zoom the map to your area of interest: a state, city, zip code, census tract, address, congressional district or school district”.

You can view tables to compare data across places and look at date over time” and “generate reports within specific geography from the community profile, IRS taxReport, housing data, and home mortgage reports and rental housing data…”

In Joel Burslem’s Blog about PolicyMap , he points out that he could “see (him) self possibly using PolicyMap to investigate a move to a new neighborhood”

As a Realtor at Coldwell Banker, I am often asked about specific demographic questions such as racial makeup, religion base, gender, age, criminality, etc…

However, for several reasons, including not knowing such changing data well enough to answer, the actual answers clients are looking for, and most importantly, Fair Housing Laws protecting discrimination, I am not at liberty to discuss.

However, as a Real Estate professional, I want my clients to have the information, they need personally, to make the right decision on where to live for their family.

Policy Map provides one of the best tools on the market to point buyers, sellers, investors and Realtors to, as they describe, a “goldmine of information” you need to make an informed buying or selling decision.

Policymap.com – all the demographic data you need !

Click here to read this article by James Wexler on ActiveRain on September 2nd, 2008.

By Alex Veiga, AP Business Writer




LOS ANGELES — I have no reason to feel unsafe in my neighborhood, but I appear to be surrounded by dozens of people convicted of everything from theft and sex crimes to public drunkenness and speeding.Not that I think of my slice of Los Angeles as Wisteria Lane. But the sight of a map pinpointing exactly where these lawbreakers live — or once lived — can rattle your sense of what a safe neighborhood is.

I got some insight into the criminal quotient in my neighborhood on several websites that turn government data into interactive guides of criminal activity.

For home buyers, these sites can be a tempting tool to discern whether a neighborhood is rife with crime, or a great place to raise the kids. But how accurate are the pictures they portray?

One site that debuted Friday is CriminalSearches.com.

Created by the folks behind PeopleFinders.com, the new site crunches monthly government data down to the state and county level, says Bryce Lane, president and chief operating officer of PeopleFinders.com.

“What we’re really good at is establishing connections across all these different data sets, linking it back to a particular person,” Lane said, acknowledging, however, that some data might be missing. The company also doesn’t tap into federal crime data.

The Neighborhood Watch feature lets you focus your search by address or ZIP code. You can also search by a person’s name or specific home address, and there’s a separate search with a detailed map of registered sex offenders.

Punch in the details and the site generates a map showing small squares that represent each person who resides — or previously resided — in the area and was convicted of a crime at some point. In some cases, the site will turn up people who were arrested, but never convicted.Click on an individual square and you can get the exact address for the person and a description of their violation, among other details.

The results can be eye-opening.

But as I dug deeper into the results I found that many people are listed for traffic violations, or a crime they committed decades ago, maybe in another state.

PropertyShark.com offers a more current snapshot of crime.

In some of the metro areas, such as Los Angeles, the site links to the police department’s website, where users can generate neighborhood maps overlaid with crime data less than a week old.

Some sites take a wider approach, showing crime trends but not specific locations.

PolicyMap.com taps Census data down to the each tract of land. It also works in FBI crime data at a county level. (The site plans to add city-level crime statistics in a few weeks.)

Like the other sites, PolicyMap lets you drill down to the neighborhood level surrounding a specific address. The map, uses a color system to show the degree to which a certain crime has occurred in the area.

PolicyMap also provides other community characteristics. You can see the percentage of campaign contributions that went to senators Barack Obama or John McCain, as well as the area’s ethnic composition, or even the percent of all home loans that were subprime.

[READ MORE]

Click Here to read the full article on USA Today.

This article by Alex Veiga of the Associated Press was published July 18th, 2008 and appeared in the following publications (and many others).

MemberSpeak: The Reinvestment Fund

Good Data Drives Good Investment Decisions

by Maggie McCollough and Jeremy Nowak, The Reinvestment Fund

The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a leading community development financial institution active throughout the mid-Atlantic, , recently launched PolicyMap- an online mapping application for policymakers, lending institutions, foundations, government agencies, developers, and other civic investors.

Why did TRF develop PolicyMap?

For almost 10 years, TRF has conducted research for foundations, local and state governments, and civic groups in order to help these institutions make better public policy and investment decisions. Geographic analysis, in particular, allowed us to help

state governments understand the types of neighborhoods most impacted by foreclosures; enabled city governments to analyze neighborhood conditions and markets as a way of allocating limited resources; and helped foundations to understand the types of neighborhoods in which they are making investments.

Over time, we started to dream about serving interactive maps on the web for our clients and partners – along with the public – as an alternative to generating static, paper maps. We explored a number of ways to build PolicyMap and chose to work with Placebase, the developer of Pushpin™, a powerful platform for the development of professional web applications in mapping, business geographics, and location-based services.

It is our hope that PolicyMap will encourage institutions from all over the country to use data to target investments and refine their strategies to preserve and rebuild vulnerable communities. By just going online, pulling up a map and clicking on a shaded area, institutions now have the ability to quickly understand neighborhoods in which they are making investments, evaluate neighborhoods for potential investments and see how neighborhoods have changed over time.

What is PolicyMap?

4,000 indicators related to demographics, real estate markets, crime, schools, housing affordability, employment, energy, and public investments. (Hence, our tag line “All the data you need, all in one place, all online.”!) We’ll regularly update the data that is in PolicyMap and will continue to add new datasets including detailed school performance statistics, health indicators, and more affordable housing information.

[READ MORE]

Directions Magazine (DM): What is TRF and why is it in the data/mapping business?

Maggie McCullough (MM): The Reinvestment Fund (TRF), a charitable nonprofit organization, is a national innovator in capitalizing distressed communities and stimulating economic growth for low- and moderate-income families. Since its inception in 1985, TRF has made over $725 million in community investments. TRF is also nationally recognized for its research and housing-related policy analysis. Since 2000, TRF has used data analysis and mapping to help public sector and philanthropic clients with their strategies to preserve and rebuild vulnerable communities. TRF created PolicyMap as a more efficient and dynamic way to serve this type of social investor’s needs.

Percent of all families that live in poverty in 2000 in Los Angeles. (Click for larger image)