Thanks for your hard work. I echo others who say that the analysis you provide is among the most objective out there.

Sean, you are probably right. That's why I gather the single family data under a million at month end. Just to get a better perspective of the "sweet spot." I am trying to keep the daily market watch consistent with the "public" information as best I can and then, embellish it with my own research and analysis.

Merv,

I'm speculating that today one of the very expensive homes in Loudoun fell out of your Daily Market Watch. Is that correct? Also, it appears from the "New Contracts" graph that there was a spike up a few days ago, maybe this is another multi-million dollar property causing this?

My thought is that the fluctuations, up or down, the past few months were primarily caused by changes in the basket of homes sold. My best guess is that if you took a constant basket of homes sold, the market is flat as a pancake right now.

Important:
Some clarification is warranted. The Daily Market Watch charts include ALL property types, does NOT include new construction and has an upper limit of $10,000,000. The upper limit was put in place because of a $24,000,000 property sold in Loudoun earlier this year that badly distorted the average prices.

On the other hand, the Loudoun Single Family Detached Home Prices chart is a monthly chart that is ONLY the single family property type, does NOT include new construction and has an upper limit of $1,000,000.

I assumed Sean's question referred to the spike in the Daily Market Watch Chart and my observations were based on researching those variances. I apologize if I caused any confusion by not being specific as to what chart I was referring to.

Hi Regina, Thanks for your comments and being a reader of the Guide. There are many charts and I get data from a couple of different sources but, all based on MLS data. First, all of the monthly charts with six years of data are created from monthly statistics available to the public. This data does not filter based on price or type of property (all property types are included, Single family detached, TH, Condos and new construction).

The Daily Market Watch also includes all the data without filtering with the exception of a $10,000,000 upper limit I installed because of a single $24,000,000 property sold in Loudoun early this year that badly distorted the averages.

The article you are referring to refers to a special monthly chart I created for single family homes, less than $1,000,000 without new construction. I created this for the sole purpose of looking at these properties that depict the majority of the Loudoun market activity. I extract the data manually from the MLS because public data does not show this in a convenient way.

The question/observation Sean had as I interpreted it was in regard to the Loudoun Daily Market Watch chart referenced earlier.

I am concluding that I have not done a very good job of documenting all the differences. Sorry for the confusion. I have some work to do.

I hope this helps.

PS: Also note that the pass phrase for the comment form must be entered prior to clicking "Preview" or "Submit." I get about 450 spam comments a day and just don't have the time to manually filter through them. I luckily found yours. Thanks for commenting. It is real people participating in a real dialog that makes this a great medium!

Given that the lead paragraph of your "Loudoun Single Family Gets Price Bounce" blog read as follows: "Monday, April 02, 2007, 9:07:29 AM | Merv Forney The price trend chart for Loudoun County is updated for March (single family, detached homes, less than $1,000,000) and shows a positive price bounce. Here are my observations comparing March to February: " I think revising the original post including the chart would be wise. Afterall, the paragraph claimed to exclude properties in excess of $1M. My suggestion would be to amend your post by crossing out the incorrect information as you have done with the P.S. portion of that post and, noting any information which should be revised to accurately reflect the removal of the three properties sold in excess of $1M plus revising the chart. You should also consider revising or updating the headline "Loudoun Single Family Gets Price Bounce."

I've been following your blog since January and have appreciated your honesty which is very rare among real estate agents. I've been researching this market since last July and you are truly the only one that has provided objective and reasoned opinions regarding local trends. It would be unfortunate for new visitors to mistakenly draw the conclusion you intended to mislead with your April 2 post.

And finally, I think keeping to your $1m limit is fine given that is the original limit you imposed. It also represents the majority of transactions or units sold in any given month as reported by NVAR.

Thanks for remaining open, honest and transparent. You are truly a rare find in the DC Real Estate market.