Sacramento Real Estate Blog

We’ve updated our listings database.  It was getting pretty long in the tooth there.

Most people who are users of our web site(s) probably don’t know it, but many of our web sites including this one, our Roseville real estate site and our Elite Properties company site actually rely on two different databases of listings.  When you use our search page, for example, you’re using a listings database that’s our IDX company gets from our Metrolist database.  These listings are updated daily, so when you do a search, you’re looking at listings that are within twenty-four hours of being as current as the ones that we as Realtors® can look at..

In addition to the search tools that our IDX company provides, however, we also wanted to allow you to browse for certain types of listings.  One thing our IDX system doesn’t do, for example, is show you short sales and foreclosures.  Because we don’t have direct access to the database our IDX company uses, we’ve created a second database that we can use in various ways.

For example, our foreclosure search page lets you search for foreclosures and short sales, or browse them by county.  Similarly our new homes section let’s you see homes that have just been built that are listed in the MLS, and our condo pages contain links to condos grouped by price and county.

As we mentioned above, we’ve also used this database on some of our other sites.  Many clients find us through our the maps of listings by zip code that we maintain on our company site.  These maps include zip codes in El Dorado County, Placer County, and Sacramento County.  Within each zip code you can find active listings and get recent market data.  We publish similar data for Placer County only on our Roseville site.

Unlike our IDX system, which is updated automatically on a daily basis, these other resources are updated manually as time permits.

We realize that from a software perspective, that’s not the brightest way to do it.  But if you’ve ever tried to get someone from Metrolist to call you back about a data feed, you probably have a good idea that it’s not half-dumb from an organizational perspective.

The good news is, it’s up to date now.  So as my wife is fond of saying, “Get your red hot houses here!”

Enjoy.

Sacramento’s Arden Arcade (95825) (or “Arden / Arcade Creek”, if you prefer) includes some of my favorite areas, including the condos along La Riviera drive, which in my opinion are well priced and have excellent access to highway 50, downtown, and Sac State.

95825 is one of five zip codes that Metrolist describes as “Arden / Arcade Creek”, along with 95815, 95864, 95841, and 95821.  Needless to say, that’s one pretty big “neighborhood”, one which varies considerably in price and amenities.

This May, the average home sold in Arden Arcade for $317,413, on the face of it only a one tenth of one per cent drop from last year’s average sale price of $317,887.  Similarly, the median price did not change much, only 2.7%, from $318,500 last May to $310,00 this May.

Under the surface, however, things changed a bit more dramatically, as this year’s buyer purchased an 11.6% larger home (average square feet of 1453 this year compared to 1302 square feet last year).  So on a sold price per square foot basis, prices fell some 10.5%, from $244.15 on average last May, to $218.45 per square foot on average this May.

The expired to sold ratio is up from last year, but is moderate at 47.8%.  We have approximately eight months of inventory in Arden Arcade.  The percentage of short sales and foreclosures that we have in inventory in Arden / Arcade (15.5%) is moderate compared to Sacramento County as a whole (26%).

For more information about Arden Arcade, or any of the zip codes in Sacramento County, check out our index of Sacramento Neighborhoods by Zip Code.  To be honest, this isn’t the friendliest user interface I ever created, but if you follow the links you’ll find lots of useful information including:

• Average pricing
• Maps of the zip codes
• Maps of listings for sale and recently sold for several individual neighborhoods.  (Our neighborhood or “subdivision” database is not complete, so if there’s something you want to be included, let us know and we’ll try to add it).

Enjoy!

I’ve been dedicating a lot of this time on this blog to a project that’s actually taking place on our Elite Properties company site, so I’ve decided to bite the bullet and spin off a new blog for that project, the Sacramento Mapping Project Blog.

We’ll continue to post the non geomaniacal posts over here, but over time we expect our Mapping Project Blog to become a major resource and directory for our own mashups as well as the many off site resources that help you get around the county.

Here it is not even Haloween, and I’m started to get very interested in the latest monstrous Mashup possibilities offered by the Yahoo Map API.  Actually I was interested a few days ago when I first saw what the API could do. 

As you know by now, between a glimmer in the developer’s eye and a full blown application lies an opportunity to draw an outline of 95684.

How 95684 Got Its Groove On

So without further ado, here’s my first hobbling along example featuring the now famous 95864 profile with the Yahoo maps API.  It’s more a proof of concept than anything, but what’s cool is that you can just drop your addresses into your code and up pops your marker more or less where the house is.  I know, it’s only rock and roll but I like it.

Where the whole effort starts to get interesting is that I should have some really neat neighborhood maps within a couple of weeks or less.

Whatever Happened to My Transylvania Twist?

It’s now the mash…

Thanks to PERL, the US Census Bureau, and a total unwillingness to walk away from my desk, my awesome map everything in Sacramento County project is now shipping (version .007). 

OK, so there’s a lot more to do to make this cool and useful, but the Sacramento County Zip Code Map Index is already up and running, not to mention the 57 (Hey — just like Heinz!) zip code maps thus indexed.*

Here for example is our old friend 95864 – our original figure study model.  95864 now has lots of friends to play with.

*(Woops — make that 56.  Something is rotten in Denmark, I mean, McClellan AFB, so I’ve taken that off line).

Over the last few weeks I started showing some new Google maps for Roseville and other areas in Placer County.  I had some fun putting that together, but working with the map data turned out to be rather tedious, especially since my goal is to provide similar maps for all of Sacramento County soon.

The data you need for drawing zip code boundaries is publicly available, but in a rather unusual text file format.  Unusual text file format, you say?   Any  programmers reading this are no doubt ready to shout:  Use PERL!  Those of you who aren’t programmers may be amused to learn that PERL is an acronym for a programming language, which stands for either Practical Extraction and Reporting Language or Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister.  What’s worse, the people who support the latter definition are more likely to be PERL advocates!  Given those two definitions, you can see that if you have some rubbish that needs to be listed, PERL has the right stuff.

If there were seven circles in Geek heaven, PERL would sit somewhere darned close to the middle of number seven.

Anyway, after a couple of pleasant hours last night and a whopping 49 lines of PERL code, I had the unusual format transformed into a database ready script.  With another day or two of heads-down work, I should be in a position to map out Sacramento County rather nicely.

The Sacramento County mapping project will probably live on our new Elite Properties Company Web Site, which in turn was resurrected from the ashes of our not-doing-too-much other Sacramento site.

As an aside, big company web sites have been recently criticized for having pictures of agents with no real biographical information behind them.  However, as we’ve proven with our agent pages, you don’t need to be big for that.

Really given the way this is unfolding the real estate mapping category should become a blog of its own on the other site, but I’ve found that whenever I have more than two blogs going, only two end up getting my attention anyway.  

Maybe I can just recuse myself from Amador County.

I’ve always wanted to recuse myself from someplace.

I was just thinking about some of the real estate web site development projects I have planned or underway, and to tell you the truth, it’s exciting.

You know.  Progammer exciting.  Your endorphins may vary.

As far as real estate mapping sites are concerned, I have more to learn before settling on an API.  I’ve been playing around a lot with Google’s, and it works well enough, but it seems rather limited in functionality.   I like the look of this Yahoo App, and some of what I’ve read about the Yahoo APIs, but I’m also seeing some nice stuff shipping on Microsoft’s API, so the learning curve isn’t over yet.

As someone brilliant once observed, “The nice thing about standards is we have so many of them.”

So while I’m hunting for the API that I’ll want to use for my next foray  into real estate mapping, one of my projects will be finishing up the existing work on my overall Placer County Zip Code Map and the rest of the component area maps on my Roseville site.   A few hours ought to have the maps in good shape (for what they are).

Also in the work queue is the new company web site, which now has the brokerage-wide IDX in place but otherwise is too broken to be linking to just yet.  The IDX system for this site will take the place of several individual agent accounts I have now, which will be consolidated to use this one brokerage account.  At the same time, I have to sell off one site if possible, and remove about one to three more from Google’s index.  The idea here is to prune off the dead wood, so hopefully the rest of the tree will do even better.

Then there’s the work item:  more maps, more use of the listings script, more bug fixes and enhancements to the listing script.

Finish up the redesign of BridgetSells.com and ship it.

Pay some attention to poor neglected Amador County.  It’s starting to feel like Kim Jong-il:  I’m so ronery.  Or maybe just do a King Solomon on it and give half of it to one mom and half to another.

Write an agent performance feedback form.

Simonize the coax.

Rah.

Today I had more fun with my listing display script and the Google Map API, producing some maps and listings for Rocklin and a broader Western Placer County Zip Code Map.

 

Keep on Rocklin in the Free World.

Sorry.

There’s some map starting to happen for Granite Bay as well.

Following up on some recent posts about some different work I’ve been doing on my custom listing display script and playing with the Google Maps API, here’s a fun little bit of work product, my a custom Google Map of Roseville with links to the listings displayed by the listing script.

It’s nice to see the work paying off in something tangible. Whether it’s useful is another matter — in that respect, I’ll judge it a success if any buyers mention it.