New Housing Data Portal

Today we are launching what is the beginning of a housing data portal: housing.ctdata.org! This project began as a quest to understand the difference between multiple data sources for a particular indicator. The inquiry evolved into this new data portal focused on multiple sources of housing data. This housing data portal gives users the ability to explore, download, and analyze housing data in your town.

We examined the strengths and weaknesses of different data sources to help users make data-informed decisions. Most recently, one of our users asked us about the source and collection methods for the Census measure, "Median Home Value by Town." We discovered that for this measure, homeowners are asked to estimate the value of their home if it were up for sale.

You can imagine our surprise at the possibility that the home values for each town may be higher than actual housing values given the known norm that people overvalue their homes. We wanted to compare the Median Home Value to other publicly available data source on home value and believed that Zillow provides just such a resource!

We don't want to keep our findings to ourselves. The data portal is the product our work to answer a simple user question, and it represents the beginning of a housing data resource for Connecticut. We have aggregated data from both public and private data sources. What you will find:

  • Average median home values by county (1996-2017, Source: Zillow)

  • Average median home values by town

  • Rental prices

  • Zillow and Census home values

  • Affordability

  • Residential tax burden (estimates calculated by CTData)

Housing

An interesting feature of the site is the ability to explore 'Data by Town.' The user can select a town, get a visual comparison of the Zillow and Census data housing value estimates, a chart of census value changes, in addition to links that enable a user to download the datasets.

As we build and enhance this resource, we'll provide updates via our blog posts. Let us know what you think and if there are sources you'd like us to add!

HousingMichelle Riordan-Nold