In November, PropertyShark added free access to San Francisco foreclosure listings. Today, PropertyShark enhances their offering of San Francisco based maps and data “mash-ups” (including Recent Sales, Year Built, and Price per Square Foot).
We’re particularly fond of “Recent Sales” in terms of trend spotting, and “Year Built” in terms of context and neighborhood development (i.e., pre-1925 in dark blue).
UPDATE (1/16): PropertyShark responds to a couple of reader questions with regard to data accuracy. Our favorite line, “…SocketSite readers seem to be ahead of the curve on the real estate frontier…” And yes, flattery will get you everywhere.
∙ PropertyShark Launches San Francisco Foreclosure Listings [SocketSite]
∙ PropertyShark: San Francisco Maps [PropertyShark]
We’re fond of maps too…but take a look at South Beach. The Beacon was built prior to 1925? Clearly (more than) a few data problems.
[Editor’s Note: Good catch; there are quite a few Mission Bay parcels that appear to be incorrectly labeled. We’ll see if we can’t get some answers with regard to PropertyShark’s data feeds.]
The Los Angeles Maps are particularly fun. Earthquake faults, smog statistics and even the availability of single males (with incomes included) and wouldn’t you know it, West Hollywood is listed as being in the “meat market” category. On the San Francisco Median Home Income map there is a special green box around a 6 bock area of Presidio Heights which I guess means “Ground Zero” for the city. Are the South Beach and SOMA income statistics correct or out of date for they are suprisingly low for those neighborhoods which have been so heavily marketed?
I expect that the demographic data is from the 2000 census, which would make them very misleading for neighborhoods like South Beach.
Thanks for the feedback on the maps and data- we are always looking to improve at PropertyShark.com so we love to hear it. With the internet, real estate information has only recently become freely and widely available to the public- it is really a unique time in history where this real estate information transparency is available, letting real estate professionals and consumers have the info they need to make informed decisions.
However, since there is no real-time real estate exchange, and paperwork is filed with local governments, data can lag, sometimes greatly. It will be valuable on the whole, but exceptions and errors seem to always exist. The data lag seems to be the case with regard to the Beacon. For example, the Department of GIS might work for 2 years to develop an up-to-date map of the city, only to have a developer tear down a building 24 hours after the map is complete.
We go to great lengths to aggregate data from multiple sources and are constantly updating and making changes, but due to the scope of the cities we cover and the amount of data therein, it is always appreciated to get feedback from users on how to make the site more useful and accurate. And SocketSite readers seem to be ahead of the curve on the real estate frontier, so let us know your thoughts…
Am I wrong, or was the entire block the Beacon is on a vacant lot before construction started? It is so hard to remember that it was actually the site of San Francisco’s only (legal) RV park, and not so very long ago. (my god, South Beach has changed). Perhaps there was a pre-1925 structure on it somewhere, but I don’t recall.
But the “data lag”, unfortunately, is not all that surprising for the city.