I had been noticing that my query times had been getting worse with the rent-stats.com site. I spent a while on this thinking it was just the performance of my server, but after finding some time to troubleshoot this, I realized that it was just the way I was doing my sql queries. After testing some better queries, I think I have my performance fixed! I got blocked with some so for now I only really have data in the NWI/ chicago area and the indianapolis areas.
Indianapolis Rent Stats
I’ve been putting a lot of my free time into building out the rent statistics for Indianapolis. I think I’ve made a lot of progress and have it to a point where it’s usable and has a lot of good data. I still have a few minor tweeks I want to do to it, but I think I’m ready to move forward and start trying to pull in other markets. I’ve been trying to write in a way that will allow me to easily bring in other areas, so hopefully soon I’ll start expanding the data collection, and possibly start bringing in the data from more sources as well.
if your interested you can see this at www.hedgesadvantage.com . The Northwest Indiana link there is the older methods, Indianapolis is the rewrite of the whole thing.
Rent Tracking
I’ve been working on my rent tracking app over the past few weeks.
I still have a lot of work I want to do with it, but at this point, I think it works well enough to make it publicly accessible.
So far what do I have? … NW Indiana and the Indianapolis area.
NW Indiana was my first trial into this, and uses a much more limited and weaker method to pull in data than what I’m using for Indianapolis. Indianapolis, the way I have it setup, pulls in much more data, and it much more accurate (to the point that I’ll add in a mapped location of the data points later).
My current plan is to work out a few bugs I see here and there in it, and to convert the NW Indiana method of data collection to match Indianapolis.
From there, I may start pulling in other regions, and providing that data too.
I would say that this data I’m pulling may be somewhat similar to rentometer.com, though I also have an interest in the trends, and if rents are rising or falling, and other specifics like rent per sq ft.
If your interested, you can find these at http://www.hedgesadvantage.com/
also, click on the ads if you wan to help make more of this possible. I recently added it in the hopes that I can actually see some sort of benefit to me for writing all the code and making all this available for free.
Update– what I’ve been up to
I haven’t posted anything in a little while…
it’s been a busy few years, and a lot I’ve been working on!
what I’ve been up to in my free time is working on pulling together some scripts to arrogate rental information in the area’s I’m interested in, and allow me to track trends in rates.
I’ve put together a script that pulls in all this info form internet sources, then filters through and places them into a database.
from there I’m able to pull up statistics and weekly / monthly averages of the rates.
I want to build it out a bit more, and try to expand to some other areas I am interested in too, but I’ll see if I can get that in soon.
I’m also wanting to try to figure out where I can pull data for locations outside the us.
otherwise for my first test with it, I’m coming near having 1 year of rental data for the areas near where I live!
… and from what I see so far.. the news makes it sound like rental rates are going up at an alarming pace, but my data doesn’t really look like that is the case, at least not near me.