The numbers are in

Real estate is about numbers. Prices, rates, area, bedrooms, and of course, sales. There’s nothing wrong with a good anecdote — or 10 — but our business is one like, say, baseball: Stories are fun, but you learn more by looking at the numbers than by listening to the tales. That’s why we compile them and ponder them, massage them and fret over them, and seek out the trends that will tell us that things are looking up.

Remember, though, to be careful about statistics. “Correlation does not imply causation,” the saying goes — in other words, statistics that seem related may not be.

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