Baltimore Housing Research
I took some time to go over public data of Baltimore’s Housing Market and found some interesting things. For one, the housing crash was particularly hard felt in Baltimore. In a lot of the neighborhoods profiled, the value of a home dropped 50%. Typical losses tended to be in the $50-90,000 range. However, it would appear the market is rebounding and there are several neighborhoods where prospective first-time homeowners should definitely look to buy.
Carrollton Ridge, Concerned Citizens of Forest Park, and Biddle Street all have aggressively rebounding average home prices. The value of homes in those areas, while not at 2007 levels, is coming back; if you bought a home there in 2008, you are (likely) in the unique position of being able to sell those homes for a profit.
I particularly like Carrollton Ridge and Concerned Citizens of Forrest Park largely because in 2008 the average sale prices went up. My thought is prospectors thought those homes were good values and actually bought at a sellers price! (I initially thought that those homes don’t sell very often but both have relatively steady Units Sold numbers).
I like Biddle Street and Franklin Square because the bleeding seems to have been staunched in terms of declining value. While not profitable for buyers in 2008, the homes there are losing their value at a slower rate now than in 2008.
Attached is the data table. If anyone finds anything interesting (or a mistake) let me know (email: me@jammond.com). For the purposes of my search, I looked at homes in the $30-50,000 range then I looked at the average value of that home in 2007 and 2009. A big negative change (IMO) means that the homes are nice but the real estate market took a lot of the value. For instance in Carrollton Ridge, you see an average price of $26,675 today. In 2007 that same house cost $68,226.
The next step will likely be: finishing off the list (I only did A-G) and building a scraper/google maps mashup (or Google Alert) to geo-locate criminal activity in those areas and compare it to historical data. My hunch is that I will be able to further eliminate undesirable areas by an uptick in criminal activity.
Attached is a link to the data table.
By the way, here is Carrollton Ridge:
