How much does a cow weigh? Penelope the cow, to be specific. A seemingly simple question, with an answer that gives credit to the notion that aggregation of information in groups results in more accurate information than independent prediction. This particular question was posed by Planet Money to over 17,000 people of diverse ages and ...
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For the month of November, First American’s proprietary Potential Home Sales model (previously called the Existing-Home Sales Capacity model) showed that the market potential for existing-home sales decreased by 2.1 percent compared to October and decreased by 8.0 percent compared to a year ago. The Potential Home Sales model provides a gauge on ...
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Will Janet Yellen’s Christmas gift to the housing market be a rate increase on December 16? According to the CME Group FedWatch tool, the probability that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates for the first time since 2006 is now over 80 percent. For perspective, let’s think about 2006: the iPhone did not exist, MySpace was the leading ...
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This week, Representative Loretta Sanchez (D-Ca) spoke on the floor of the US House of Representatives about the leadership forum, “Achieving the American Dream,” that was held on the Hill in late October. Her short speech highlighted the importance of homeownership as a source of wealth creation for middle-class Americans and its role in ...
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“One of these things is not like the other,” is an adage we learn as children to teach us how to identify outliers. This phrase maintains its relevance as adults, especially in the age of “big” data. This week’s release of the First American Real Estate Sentiment Index (RESI) is one such example of its use.
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We’ve posted the fourth quarter 2015 First American Real Estate Sentiment Index, which measures title agent sentiment on a variety of key market metrics and industry issues. It’s based on a quarterly survey of title agents that do business with First American. More than 3,000 title agents from 50 states have participated in the first two editions ...
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