Bryn - Mawr
C A R A G
Cedar - Isles - Dean
E C C O
East Isles
Kenwood
Lowry Hill
Lowry Hill East
West Calhoun
Camden Industrial
Cleveland
Folwell
Humboldt Industrial
Lind - Bohanon
McKinley
Shingle Creek
Victory
Webber - Camden
Elliot Park
Downtown East
Downtown West
Loring Park
North Loop
Steven's Square
Cooper
Hiawatha
Howe
Longfellow
Seward
Harrison
Hawthorne
Jordan
Near - North
Sumner - Glenwood
Willard Hay
Diamond Lake
Ericsson
Field
Hale
Keewaydin
Minnehaha
Morris Park
Northrop
Page
Regina
Wenonah
Audubon Park
Beltrami
Bottineau
Columbia Park
Holland
Logan Park
Marshall Terrace
Northeast Park
Sheridan
St. Anthony East
St. Anthony West
Waite Park
Windom Park
East Phillips
Midtown Phillips
Phillips West
Ventura Village
Bancroft
Bryant
Central
Corcoran
Lyndale
Powderhorn Park
Standish
Whittier
Armatage
East Harriet
Fulton
Kenny
King Field
Linden Hills
LynnHurst
Tangletown
Windom
Cedar - Riverside
Como
Marcy - Holmes
Mid - City Industrial
Nicollet Island / East Bank
Prospect Park
University

Battle Creek - Highwood

Como

Dayton's Bluff

Downtown

Greater East Side

Hamline - Midway

Highland

Macalester - Groveland

Union Park

North End

Payne - Phalen

St. Anthony Park

Summit Hill

Summit - University

Frogtown / Thomas - Dale

West Seventh

West Side

The housing market index (HMI) evaluates the housing market of individual residential blocks and compares them to the average of all residential blocks in a user-defined geography, such as a neighborhood. In addition to serving as an analytical tool for monitoring conditions of an area’s housing market, the HMI may also serve as a guide for developing policy recommendations and investment strategies for long-term housing stabilization. Unlike many other housing market analyses, the HMI provides a “zoomed-in,” block-level picture of the housing market by using locally produced parcel-level data.

Variables and Methodology

The HMI examines the housing market through a combination of four housing market indicators:

  • Value Retention — which calculates the change in estimated market value of the homes on a given block from its pre-recession high point to its current value (source: Hennepin County and Ramsey County Parcel dataset Q1 2016)
  • Owner occupancy — which looks at the percentage of homes on a block that are currently occupied by owners (source: Hennepin County and Ramsey County Parcel dataset)
  • Physical condition — which assess the current structural integrity/quality of the homes on a given block (Minneapolis Assessors Office; Ramsey County Assessors Office)
  • Vacancy — which determines the percentage of homes on a given block that are vacant as of March 2016 (Minneapolis Vacant and Boarded Registry; St. Paul Vacant and Boarded Registry)

The four component variables of the HMI are measured on different scales. To combine them into an overall index, each variable’s block-level averages go through a z-score transformation. In this process, each block-level variable is given a new score based on the mean and standard deviation of the same variable for the user-defined geography. This puts all four variables on a common scale that reflects, for each variable, the level of disparity between each block and the larger geography’s average—specifically, the number of standard deviations that each block is above or below the area average. (A value equal to the average is 0.)

By default, the HMI assigns equal weight to each of the variables. But users of this site may adjust the weights to emphasize or deemphasize the variables as they wish.