Median prices for Scottsdale don’t tell you much

This article in the Arizona Republic is entitled “Median price for Scottsdale homes falls 6%”.

Man, those numbers sure can be misleading! One month Scottsdale median home prices are way up and another month they’re way down.

There is so much variation in the median home price in Scottsdale each month that comparing this April to the previous April or this March to the previous March, so called “year over year” numbers, doesn’t tell you much at all. If one of the months used is one of those particularly high months, the comparison is way off base.

I use year over year estimates myself.

But I follow up with graphs of the actual home price data so you can see the trends yourself.

The graphs are phenomenally more useful than the year over year numbers.