You Want Labels and Boundaries That Reflect Neighborhood Reality? Call a Realtor!
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Last week, Dallas Morning News editorial writer Tod Robberson complained that the neighborhood boundaries used by North Texas Real Estate Information Systems are the “wackiest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” he wrote. He wished that NTREIS would get its act together and use “labels and boundaries that reflect reality, not fantasy.” He favors the neighborhood maps created by BC Workshop.
I think this is one of the best blog posts I have seen. Opens whole cans of thought. I have personally named this nonsense “Area Enigma”.
What Robberson was talking about was the lines drawn around neighborhoods for the North Texas Real Estate Information Systems. You’ve also heard them called “Areas”. Robberson’s point is that the map lumps together disparate neighborhoods in a way that, as he put it, “could give a badly distorted picture of actual real estate value fluctuations.” Or no values at all. A dramatic increase in Lakewood property values, say, has nothing to do with property values in South Dallas slumping but if you lump them together, they do.
Or, Lakewood goes up, South Dallas goes down, Area 12 real estate values are — what?
Oak Lawn is the worst: Area 17 reaches up into Farmer’s Branch. So when we are searching for neighborhoods or blocks of homes that have value changes, you cannot use the area figures. You have to go block by block. It’s a pain and archaic in this day and age. But it’s also why I’ve said it a million times: residential real estate is a LOCAL story.
I am not sure Robberson meant this gripe in a fiscal way, but I sure do. I was going to ask NTREIS why, why in the world are these area designations so silly? But Inman News (Matt Carter over there rocks), beat me to the punch. Here’s what NTREIS told Inman:
A spokeswoman for NTREIS — which provides MLS services to 15 Realtor associations in a 48,000-square-mile area of North Texas including the Dallas-Fort Worth region — provided the following response to a request for comment from Inman News:
“NTREIS, like all MLS systems, provides a variety of geographic search tools for MLS subscribers; area numbers and labels are just one of many resources available to a real estate licensee and were generated to easily narrow down a search within the 48,000 square miles of our service area. These areas are updated as requested by the shareholder Realtor associations we serve. For statistical purposes, professionals are able to analyze the information by school districts, ZIP codes and any number of other parameters. The particular map referenced in Mr. Robberson’s blog post is one used by his own employer, the Dallas Morning News — this map is not provided by the North Texas Real Estate Information Systems. The Dallas Morning News provides this information for general reference to inform the public; a consumer who requires more detailed information should always consult a Realtor professional who can provide a more customized analysis.”
You want the info, go get you a Realtor. That’s the answer they gave. Because all the information in NTREIS is owned by the company, which is a kind of giant mutual company owned by the agents themselves who pay dear fees to maintain that info. Update: and protect it!
Still, I’m not satisfied. Did these boundaries evolve? How were they decided? Who drew the lines? How many years ago? What about sub-neighborhoods? Here on CandysDirt.com, we are building a data-base on sub-neighborhoods — The Peninsula, Hillcrest Estates, Janmar, Hollywood Heights Santa Monica — and we get the info from Realtors who know the ‘hoods (as only Realtors can) and the homeowners themselves. In other words, we are going to the horse’s mouth bit by bit, not pulling and regurgitating a bunch of stuff off the internet.
Which is, I guess, kind of what you have to do with our Area neighborhoods.
Totally!
Totally!
You sure know how to open a can of worms… changing this will be like changing congressional districts.
You sure know how to open a can of worms… changing this will be like changing congressional districts.
I drew the boundaries for AREA 18, back in the early 1980's. Area 18 should be just the area south of LBJ that feeds into Richardson Schools. We now have some DISD properties north of Northwest Highway (which could be dropped in to the area of DISD south of N.W. Highway) and some homes north of LBJ, that I feel should have their own area or be included in area 23.
To me the biggest problem is AREA 12, which is far too large and would be better used as.
about 5 smaller areas.
Peggy, what else would you suggest and how to get this going?
I drew the boundaries for AREA 18, back in the early 1980's. Area 18 should be just the area south of LBJ that feeds into Richardson Schools. We now have some DISD properties north of Northwest Highway (which could be dropped in to the area of DISD south of N.W. Highway) and some homes north of LBJ, that I feel should have their own area or be included in area 23.
To me the biggest problem is AREA 12, which is far too large and would be better used as.
about 5 smaller areas.
Peggy, what else would you suggest and how to get this going?
I am a Realtor®, and a proud member of MetroTex Association of Realtors. I think I know the answers to some of the questions which you bring up in your blog posting. I'm sharing what I know, and I would appreciate it if other Realtors® would chime in and correct me where I am wrong.
1. How many years ago were the Area boundaries set up? When I became a Realtor® in 1985 I was shown the "Map of MLS Areas." It was my understanding that the boundaries between the areas had been decided within the past 5 years before I came into the business.
2. Who drew the lines? The simple answer is this: the boards of Realtors® selected individual agents and committees of agents to make recommendations about where the area boundaries would be placed. Bear in mind that this happened in the days before personal computers came into use. In 1985 I received a printed MLS Book every month. That book was the "database" of homes for sale. We all carried the database with us in our cars, and we "searched the database" by flipping through the pages.
3. Why was the system of Areas and Subareas invented at all? The lines were drawn in the days when different regions had their own Boards of Realtors. For example, there was a Dallas Board, an Arlington Board, a Carrollton Board, etc. There was a push among Realtors® for regionalization of the Multiple Listing Service. All the different Boards of Realtors realized they needed a structure for sharing all their listings in one big MLS that covered a wide geographical area. The invention of Areas and Subareas was helpful in organizing the listings between all the different Boards. Compared to the fragmentation of data that had existed before this was a big improvement. When full scale computerization of the MLS was introduced in the late 1980s the pre-existing Areas and Subareas were retained as the backbone of the new computerized database.
3. Has the system of Areas and Subareas evolved since it's original implementation? New areas and subareas had to be invented when the Fort Worth Association of Realtors and all its satellite boards decided to unite with the Dallas Association of Realtors and all its satellite boards. As best as I can recall, this was when NTREIS came into being. However, there has been little if any change in the Area boundaries that cover Dallas and Dallas County. Presumably new Area definitions will be invented as the far distant suburbs of Dallas and Ft. Worth continue to expand further out from core urban areas.
4. There was talk of completely doing away with Areas and Subareas approximately seven years ago. I was on a committee that did some of that talking. It was argued that the availabilty of GPS eliminated the usefulness of the old Area-based database structure. For your information I was one of the people who believed it was counterproductive to throw out the Area definitions, partly because all of our historical record of sales data was organized by Area.
5. As a Realtor®, every month I receive aggregated sales data from NTREIS. It is arranged by Area. This is the data that is released to local news organizations. This is the data published in the Dallas Morning News and quoted on radio and television, and in countless other media outlets. This is not a scheme to keep the "real data" out of the hands of the public. If I want to analyze a particular block, a particular subdivision, or any other subset of real estate sales, I have to do it myself. So you see, when I have a question I have to ask my Realtor® and he has to find the applicable data and figure out what it says. It just happens that I am my own Realtor® and I have (relatively) unfettered access to all the individual home sales.
Ken you are a fountain of information! Thanks!
I am a Realtor®, and a proud member of MetroTex Association of Realtors. I think I know the answers to some of the questions which you bring up in your blog posting. I'm sharing what I know, and I would appreciate it if other Realtors® would chime in and correct me where I am wrong.
1. How many years ago were the Area boundaries set up? When I became a Realtor® in 1985 I was shown the "Map of MLS Areas." It was my understanding that the boundaries between the areas had been decided within the past 5 years before I came into the business.
2. Who drew the lines? The simple answer is this: the boards of Realtors® selected individual agents and committees of agents to make recommendations about where the area boundaries would be placed. Bear in mind that this happened in the days before personal computers came into use. In 1985 I received a printed MLS Book every month. That book was the "database" of homes for sale. We all carried the database with us in our cars, and we "searched the database" by flipping through the pages.
3. Why was the system of Areas and Subareas invented at all? The lines were drawn in the days when different regions had their own Boards of Realtors. For example, there was a Dallas Board, an Arlington Board, a Carrollton Board, etc. There was a push among Realtors® for regionalization of the Multiple Listing Service. All the different Boards of Realtors realized they needed a structure for sharing all their listings in one big MLS that covered a wide geographical area. The invention of Areas and Subareas was helpful in organizing the listings between all the different Boards. Compared to the fragmentation of data that had existed before this was a big improvement. When full scale computerization of the MLS was introduced in the late 1980s the pre-existing Areas and Subareas were retained as the backbone of the new computerized database.
3. Has the system of Areas and Subareas evolved since it's original implementation? New areas and subareas had to be invented when the Fort Worth Association of Realtors and all its satellite boards decided to unite with the Dallas Association of Realtors and all its satellite boards. As best as I can recall, this was when NTREIS came into being. However, there has been little if any change in the Area boundaries that cover Dallas and Dallas County. Presumably new Area definitions will be invented as the far distant suburbs of Dallas and Ft. Worth continue to expand further out from core urban areas.
4. There was talk of completely doing away with Areas and Subareas approximately seven years ago. I was on a committee that did some of that talking. It was argued that the availabilty of GPS eliminated the usefulness of the old Area-based database structure. For your information I was one of the people who believed it was counterproductive to throw out the Area definitions, partly because all of our historical record of sales data was organized by Area.
5. As a Realtor®, every month I receive aggregated sales data from NTREIS. It is arranged by Area. This is the data that is released to local news organizations. This is the data published in the Dallas Morning News and quoted on radio and television, and in countless other media outlets. This is not a scheme to keep the "real data" out of the hands of the public. If I want to analyze a particular block, a particular subdivision, or any other subset of real estate sales, I have to do it myself. So you see, when I have a question I have to ask my Realtor® and he has to find the applicable data and figure out what it says. It just happens that I am my own Realtor® and I have (relatively) unfettered access to all the individual home sales.
Ken you are a fountain of information! Thanks!