Last week, I interviewed a gentleman from Prudential Preferred Properties, who talked about a tool on their website that allows people to understand what's happening in real estate in their area. At first glance, Market Watch seemed like one of those basic reports that gives you realtor jargon and graphs that mean nothing to you, but I signed up anyway. When I started to receive the weekly reports via email I learned several things:
1- My husband and I should have waited another year to buy. (I kept that little nugget to myself)
2- The Market Watch report comes in an abreviated form (called a "summary report") for people like myself who suffer from self-diagnosed ADD.
and 3- There's no guessing - they tell you what all the graphs and numbers mean to you in straight, easy-to-understand terms. Love that.
More info after the jump...
The Market Watch tool is actually really easy to use and gives you current information (up to the week) in a weekly emailed report. If you're all about spreadsheets and analytics, you can sign up for the full report, or if you're like me and have the attention span of a 3-year-old, you can just get the summary report. Either way, it tells you in the margin - in non-realtor terms - what the report means to you. Plus, you can get as specific as choosing the zip code you'd like to look into. Which is really ideal since the price of homes in the Gold Coast area of Chicago probably isn't what you're looking for if you'd like to sell your house in, say, Bourbonais.
Possibly the best part of the whole deal? Other than receiving the report every week, you won't hear a peep out of them. I fully expected to be contacted by an agent within a day of signing up, but it didn't happen. Still hasn't. It's nice to know that in a rough market there's a tool that's just there to help people - not to sell them.
To see samples of the reports, click here.
