Economic Snapshot Overview by Dr. Reid Cummings - September 2018
Posted on September 27, 2018 by Dr. Reid Cummings
Greetings, and welcome to the September 2018 Mobile Bay Economic Snapshot.
In November 2017, we introduced the Snapshot as part of our efforts to become a primary data and education resource for our region’s professionals, business owners, nonprofits, and governmental entities. We started with a fairly robust compilation of key regional and national business and economic data. For those of you following our progress, you know that we have continually worked to expand the data we track, as well as increasing the intuitiveness of each of our dashboards.
Earlier this summer, we added certain demographic data for the 8-county region of Southwest Alabama. This information shows population changes over time not only at the county level, but also at the city and municipal levels as well. We then announced the addition of port tonnage and commodity volumes for imports and exports which moved through the Ports of Houston, Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Pascagoula, Tampa, Charleston, Savannah, and of course, Mobile. We report these data for each year since 2012 to provide an historical context.
This month, we are pleased to announce a significant improvement in the way we track and report real estate market activity. Please recall that we track and report every real estate transaction recorded in the offices of the Mobile and Baldwin County Probate Courts. This means that our data represents the entire population of transactions, not just a particular segment or type. Beginning this month, we are now tracking and reporting all real estate transactions for the last 10 years by city or municipality. We report the number of units sold, average and median sales prices for both new and existing single-family homes, condominiums, and commercial properties. Very soon we will also report average and median sales per square foot across property types.
We present these new data points in the form of a regional map dotted with varying sizes of bubbles. Clicking on any of the bubbles will change the screen view to a specific town, and the data reported in the columnar tables below the map will change to the municipal level. Currently, the data are aggregated and presented by year; soon, we plan to present the same data by month.
As excited as we are at our newest release, be assured we will continue making improvements and adding new data points. As always, thank you for your interest.
Until next time, from everyone at the Center, we wish you and yours all of the best.