As 2018 comes into full swing, we’ve started to look at some new ways to visualize the Philadelphia Housing Index (PHI). To that end, we’ve begun using Tableau to explore dimensions of the PHI that go beyond our predictive index on a citywide scale and at various geographic levels. Using Tableau to visualize the PHI allows you to look at a number of variables in a more interactive manner. You can still take a look at the older version of the PHI here, but stay tuned for the coming months—we plan to unveil a new look with added layers of visualization. We decided to look at overall seasonality of the Philadelphia market and take a closer look at how that varies among neighborhoods. You may recall that overall, “June Houses are the Best Houses” in the market, and that certainly still shows in our analysis of the average per square foot sale price of homes across the city. You can click on different neighborhoods and see how seasonality varies depending on the neighborhood. For example, in 2017, West Torresdale homes sold for the greatest per square foot in August through October. Wynnefield saw relatively steady sale prices throughout 2017 and a slight bump in December. You’ll notice that when you click on a neighborhood that other dimensions of the PHI also pop up, giving a more rounded view of a specific neighborhood’s market.
By the way, you can click here and find the average per square foot price that a house in Philadelphia sold for on any given day; you’ll notice some blocks with incomplete information, which means we don’t have adequate information on arm’s length single-family home transactions to perform the analysis. In the coming months, we’ll be unveiling a new look to the PHI with greater options for interaction with the data. Is there a component of the housing index that you’d like us to highlight–either a variable of a home’s sale price or a certain geographic level we should add? Send us an email –lavery@econsultsolutions.com
Gina Lavery is an Associate Director at Econsult Solutions. Gina focuses and leads projects on market research and analysis for the Greater Philadelphia area.
Jing Liu is a GIS Research Analyst at Econsult Solutions. She specializes in spatial analysis, quantitative analysis, and data visualization. Prior to joining ESI in 2016, Jing received her Master’s in City Planning and Urban Spatial Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania