Friday Reading – 9-21-2012

– Counterparties: Your very tentative housing recovery (archived: 2019) – Summing up the recent housing reports. Or, as I said in The HooK this week, “It’s hard to know or say with confidence where we are until we have hindsight, but right now, things are looking pretty good“

– Apple’s Maps are awful, horribly bad (archived: 2016). I use Google maps all the time to walk property – the parcel boundaries are overlaid so it’s pretty handy to see the boundaries when walking land with clients. Good job screwing up, Apple. It’s very unlike you. Advice: apologize, and ask Google to release their app asap. Hysterically bad.

– Block Avenue is pretty cool, and an interesting example of how big data can be implemented … but it’s not yet viable in the Charlottesville real estate market.

– Building Permits in Albemarle County for 2nd Quarter 2012. It looks like the County’s goal to push growth into the growth areas is working – 63% of new building permits were in the growth area.

– Data is the real business model for social – As an aside, I was evaluating MLS for the local Realtor association and the demographic data that MLS providers have access to is phenomenal. One said that they (we) could help our clients know exactly who/what type of people live on a particular street, so as to help our clients know the answer to the question: “will I fit in here?” – neglecting the fact that as a Realtor I really can’t do that. At one point, one even drew two polygons and then shaded the overlap between the two – which was shaded red – as a “not so great area” – hmmm … redline much? Related reading: Big Data and Civil Rights and Questions about Data’s Intended Uses