Wouldn’t “mean” price information be helpful, too?

[lendingbubblecontinues]

I am curious why “mean” prices aren’t reported alongside “median” prices. Also, “mean” price per square foot would be a helpful indicator, no?

Certainly, the more information available to allow us to track and compare “apples and apples” in real estate transactions, the more transparent this bubble becomes. Therefore, I won’t hold my breath waiting for new metrics.

[rockclimber]

If the data set were normally distributed the mean and median would converge, but RE data is not normally distributed and that’s precisely why the mean is not very useful for measuring trends. It could be useful if you limited the data set to certain price ranges, otherwise relatively few high price homes being sold would significantly impact the mean. In the case of the median, it has almost no impact.

I do really like the idea of tracking median price/sqft though… I think that would be a better measure than just the median. PS brought that up in another thread…

[zk]

I’m not sure mean house price data would be as useful as median. All it takes is a couple $20M estates in LJ to throw the whole thing out of whack.

I’m down with the median price per sq ft idea, though. That seems to make a lot of sense.

[sdrealtor]

Mean price /sq ft is actually fine. Those $20M estates are few and far between not mention generally HUGE homes. Furthermore, as long as you are looking at the data by ZIP code your fine. San Marcos will be San Marcos and LJ will be LJ.

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