I’m discontinuing the absolutely fabulous zip code graphs I’ve been making for years.

The Cromford Report zip code graphs will still be available to my clients and customers, but to make The Cromford Report happy, you will now need to sign-in (FREE) to see them.

The Cromford Report graphs aren’t nearly as pretty as my graphs, of course, but my graphs only covered 33 zip codes.

The Cromford Report home sale price graph, for example, covers 153 zip codes, 60 towns and cities, 16 price ranges, condos as well as single family homes, normal as well as distressed sales, and is more customizable. So it has its charms.

But I do think my graphs were prettier. :)

Backstory: HomeSaleNews.com

I’ve been buying raw home sale data for Maricopa County since 2001.

Originally I converted the raw data into 124 weekly email newsletters for the 124 zip codes in Maricopa County. It was called HomeSaleNews.com.

Long before Zillow.com or Trulia.com, I was emailing data on homes sold to Arizonans and people, honestly, loved it! There were a few months in 2002 when Home Sale News was getting 60-70 new subscribers per day!

At it’s peak, “Home Sale News” had 15,000 subscribers and since the average person subscribed to over 3 zip codes, I was sending out about 50,000 emails a week from my own email server!

I gotta say, managing 124 email lists was a huge pain in the neck and I had constant problems with the newsletters getting mis-identified as spam by email spam filters. It was a lot of work for a one-man show trying to sell homes at the same time.

To improve deliverability, I eventually avoided discussing real estate in the newsletters at all and just sent the data on homes sold.

Backstory: ArizonaRealEstateNotebook.com

In 2006, I created this blog, Arizona Real Estate Notebook, as a way to talk to Arizonans about real estate without worrying about email spam filters.

Back then, if you sent out 50,000 emails in a week and it contained words like “real estate” or “homes” or “mortgage,” the email spam filters would go crazy.

At Arizona Real Estate Notebook, I could write about anything I wanted without worrying about triggering spam filters.

In 2008, to futher improve deliverability of the Home Sale News email newsletters, I started putting the homes sold data not in the email newsletters themselves but on Arizona Real Estate Notebook. Each newsletter just had a link to the page on Arizona Real Estate Notebook for that zip code where readers could see the details for one week’s worth of home sales – the address, sold price, square feet and year built.

Eventually competition came in from places like Zillow, and at the same time my search engine rankings fell.

And so did the number of subscribers each day. It eventually got to the point that the number of new subscribers would sometimes be exceeded by the number of unsubscribes, and that didn’t include the number of subscribers who never saw the newsletters anymore because they were going directly into spam folders or weren’t being delivered at all.

It eventually got to the point where the number of unsubscribes exceeded the number of new subscribes nearly every day. Bummer. The game was over. The life-cycle of Home Sale News was nearing its end.

The End of Home Sale News

In 2011, I shut down Home Sale News and I got some great “Thank You” notes from readers which I deeply, deeply appreciated.

I kept updating this blog Arizona Real Estate Notebook with the homes sold data but every now and then the system would break. WordPress or my host or an important WordPress plugin would change and the system of updating Arizona Real Estate Notebook with the latest home sales data would break. One time it took me over 80 hours to get the system up and running again.

So, in 2012 I stopped updating the zip code pages of this website with the weekly data on the individual homes sold… but I kept updating the zip code home sale charts.

Unfortunately, updating the charts costs me money to buy the raw data, and more importantly, it cost me time to do the updating each month.

It didn’t really make a lot of sense for me to continue since The Cromford Report has GREAT graphs that I’m already paying for.

Onward

I think it took me so long to decide to discontinue updating the graphs because, well… I LOVE these graphs. They’re my babies. Can you tell I’m a former economist! :)

Oh well, time to take that time and money that went into making the graphs and invest it in new adventures!

Continued Graphs

• Phoenix Real Estate Market at a Glance (John Wake)
• Metro Phoenix Inflation-Adjusted Median Home Price, 2000-Present (John Wake)
• Average Sales Price per Square Foot, 2001-Present (The Cromford Report – All zip codes)
• Number of Homes Listed for Sale (The Cromford Report – All zip codes)
• Months of Supply of Homes Listed for Sale (The Cromford Report – All cities)

Discontinued Graphs

• Scottsdale Home Prices (John Wake)
• Tempe Home Prices (John Wake)
• Chandler Home Prices (John Wake)
• Gilbert Home Prices (John Wake)
• Ahwatukee Home Prices (John Wake)
• Maryvale in Phoenix AZ Home Prices (John Wake)