On January 27, 2011 I discussed real estate mass-measurement techniques for the Saint Louis Chapter of the American Statistical Association. Using data from Saint Louis County I compared three house price index strategies: median sales price, repeat sales, and chain weighted hedonic. You can find the slides here.

In short, it is especially important to attempt quality controls when estimating real estate appreciation. Median measures of sales price are useful when discussing affordability issues, but they should not be used for appreciation analysis.

Of course, I enjoyed my time at the meeting. And I’ll never turn down lunch at Mosaic.