What’s Going On in the Housing Market?
Over the past few months, I’ve been navigating an idea maze around real estate data and visualization—specifically, how we can make local market trends more intuitive and insightful. The goal is simple: use powerful tools to make sense of complex price behavior at the neighborhood level.
To support this, I’ve been working with kepler.gl, an open-source geospatial analysis tool that lets us layer and filter market data directly on a map. With the right visual model, we can go from vague intuition to grounded insight—spotting patterns, understanding price dynamics, and developing better questions.
Mapping Dana Point: 360 Days of Market Activity
We’ve taken 360 days of listing and closing data for Dana Point and visualized it using a 3D candlestick map. Each candlestick on the map represents an individual property sale:
- Height (altitude) = Price per square foot
- Color = Percentage difference between List Price and Close Price
- Green = Sold above List Price
- Red = Sold below List Price
This view creates an immediate sense of how the market is behaving across micro-regions within the city.
Insights at a Glance
What stands out quickly:
- Inland neighborhoods are filled with green candlesticks—indicating strong buyer demand and frequent bidding wars.
- Coastal zones, surprisingly, show more red—suggesting that even high-value properties are closing below ask.
- Gated communities and specific micro-markets show exceptional overperformance—outpacing even broader positive trends.
Pro Tip: Click the 🂠 icon on the map to activate the legend and make color interpretation easier.
This kind of spatial modeling adds clarity where spreadsheets and dashboards fall short. It’s not just about what sold—but where, for how much, and how that compares to expectations.
Still a Work in Progress
This is an evolving idea, and we’re continuing to refine how this data is structured, surfaced, and used. The eventual goal is to create a modular system for exploring real estate dynamics visually—something investors, brokers, and analysts can all use to navigate local markets more intelligently.
More updates coming soon.