Housing starts in Northwest Arkansas - interesting data (Fayetteville, Rogers: new home, neighborhoods)

[Rock Climber]

I found this to be interesting. It shows housing starts in each city, along with the average value of the building permit.

No surprises in Fayetteville or Bentonville.

Most surprising to me is the value of starts in Farmington, which shows a move toward higher end construction there. Johnson isn't a huge surprise due to the Clear Creek areas.

I'm surprised Rogers' average value wasn't higher here.

Northwest Arkansas Shows Gains in Housing Market | Arkansas Business News | ArkansasBusiness.com

[JWG223]

Ah no
I don't plan to spend that much. I shall feel small

[nmnita]

Average can be totally misleading: for instance, you can have 5 houses being build in upscale neighborhoods that will bring that average way up or visa versa. Like so many charts, it is only a guideline to what is happening.

[iqra6500]

What is the design of this housing scheme?

[JWG223]

Originally Posted by nmnita

Average can be totally misleading: for instance, you can have 5 houses being build in upscale neighborhoods that will bring that average way up or visa versa. Like so many charts, it is only a guideline to what is happening.

Hah! I forgot my statistics class. I guess since Idon't actually USE 400lvl stats in my daily job, I put it out of mind.

We need the mean, median, and mode!

[Rock Climber]

Originally Posted by nmnita

Average can be totally misleading: for instance, you can have 5 houses being build in upscale neighborhoods that will bring that average way up or visa versa. Like so many charts, it is only a guideline to what is happening.

Its true. It only shows what is being built right now.

[nmnita]

Originally Posted by Rock Climber

Its true. It only shows what is being built right now.

exactly and yes, we do need to look at the entire picture. I am not saying the stats are a bad thing, they are good and encouraging, but possibly a little higher than the actually building costs of most homes in the area.

IQRA, I don't think I understand your point? I don't see any scheme, just the average price of new homes in a variety of NWA cities.

[Rock Climber]

The Farmington numbers were very interesting to me because I've always thought of Farmington as a small-town affordable option for people working in Fayetteville. It appears to be moving toward higher end construction, at least over the past year.

I never even knew there were many $300k homes in Farmington.

I think of Goshen for stuff like that outside of Fayetteville on this end of the metro.

[Rock Climber]

While it is limited data, I still thought it would be useful to people considering a move to see a view of what is being built in each city right now.

[JWG223]

Originally Posted by nmnita

exactly and yes, we do need to look at the entire picture. I am not saying the stats are a bad thing, they are good and encouraging, but possibly a little higher than the actually building costs of most homes in the area.

IQRA, I don't think I understand your point? I don't see any scheme, just the average price of new homes in a variety of NWA cities.

We need the median and mode. For example, lets say 5 houses are built. 4 cost $100K, and 1 costs $750K.

This would create an average of $230K.

That is NOT an accurate picture of what happened, though.

Instead, we take the mode, which in this case is the same as the median, $100K. Then we would need to include the Range, which is $650K. From these numbers, we can infer that most likely, a random house in the area will be around $100K, but that there is a behemoth or two out there.