When the Mortgage Crisis Comes to Town

By Aaron O. Ellis

For Hack4Reno 2013 my team worked with data from the Washoe County Assessor’s office. The entire raw dataset can be downloaded here. You can also follow my team’s work on GitHub.

During the hackathon, we performed some queries on the aggregate data that would be nearly impossible with the existing API. Here are a few that focus on buildings classified as a Single Family Residence. As of November 7, 2013, there were 109,093 of these buildings listed in Washoe county.

New home construction peaked in 2005 and dropped significantly until 2010. Despite the slight increase in recent years, construction remains at a level not seen since the early 1980s.

Year Homes
2000 2,868
2001 3,884
2002 4,305
2003 3,590
2004 4,101
2005 4,803
2006 3,732
2007 2,021
2008 1,071
2009 533
2010 385
2011 496
2012 593
2013 672*

Single Family Home Construction in Washoe County by Year

Likewise, sales of single family homes peaked in 2005 and are currently at about 60% of that high.

Year Sales
2000 18,221
2001 25,376
2002 29,618
2003 33,690
2004 32,798
2005 34,207
2006 25,170
2007 18,935
2008 16,586
2009 18,176
2010 17,621
2011 18,365
2012 19,973
2013 16,353*

Single Family Home Sales in Washoe County by Year

The sale price per square foot of homes underwent a similar decrease. Because of extreme outliers in this query, results were limited to sales less than $1.5 million and homes less than 10,000 square feet. A large number of zero dollar sales were also removed - nearly 50% of the data set.

Year Sales Avg. Ft2 $ / Ft2
2000 9,482 2,086.2 114.88
2001 11,470 2,040.1 125.13
2002 12,509 2,042.7 144.73
2003 13,521 2,013.0 150.01
2004 14,514 2,015.0 173.45
2005 13,181 2,035.6 211.91
2006 9,536 2,099.9 206.74
2007 7,361 2,054.9 187.37
2008 7,763 1,987.9 161.71
2009 9,216 1,919.0 128.02
2010 9,327 1,929.1 122.30
2011 10,030 1,924.9 103.78
2012 8,997 1,989.2 106.62
2013 7,232* 1,986.4* 127.71*

Price per Square Foot of Single Family Home Sales in Washoe County by Year

* All 2013 data is year to date.

The queries were performed using the following SQL statements. To find the number of single family homes:

SELECT
    COUNT(buildings.parcel)
FROM buildings
WHERE
    type = 'Single Family Residence'

To produce the table and graph of new home construction:

SELECT
    original_year AS year,
    COUNT(buildings.parcel)
FROM buildings
WHERE
    type = 'Single Family Residence'
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1

For home sales:

SELECT
    EXTRACT(year from sales.date) as year,
    COUNT(sales.id)
FROM sales
    JOIN buildings ON buildings.parcel = sales.parcel
WHERE
    type = 'Single Family Residence'
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1

And the price per square foot:

SELECT
    EXTRACT(year from sales.date) as year,
    COUNT(sales.id),
    AVG(properties.building_sqft),
    AVG(sales.amount / properties.building_sqft)
FROM sales
    JOIN buildings ON buildings.parcel = sales.parcel
    JOIN properties ON properties.parcel = sales.parcel
WHERE
    type = 'Single Family Residence'
    AND sales.amount <> 0 AND sales.amount < 1500000
    AND properties.building_sqft <> 0
    AND properties.building_sqft < 10000
GROUP BY 1
ORDER BY 1