From the April issue: Charting a neighborhood’s recovery since the crash is one thing, given the availability of historical data on sales and pricing. But what about taking the pulse of a neighborhood in real time? Or predicting the future of a neighborhood’s sales market? That’s far trickier. But with help from real estate analytics and consulting firm Urban Digs, The Real Deal did just that, gathering data on inventory and pending sales for Manhattan co-ops, condos and townhouses from 16 different Manhattan neighborhoods. (“Pending sales” are the number of homes in contract at any given time, not the number of new contracts signed during a set period.) [more]

From the October issue: If hindsight is 20/20, forecasting the future might be 20/200. Yes, there have been some right-on-target predictions in the last few years — among them, mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s warnings that a meltdown of the world’s financial systems was imminent in the mid-2000s. But nailing down with certainty what tomorrow’s economy may bring, experts say, is at best a crapshoot.

The difficulty of crystal-ball gazing was, in fact, the heart of Taleb’s 2007 book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” in which he says that knowing with certainty when the next big calamity will hit is as tough as finding an actual black swan.

However, Taleb goes on to say that one should try to prepare for life’s black-swan events — like Hurricane Katrina, say, or the Sept. 11 attacks — by having safeguards in place for a multitude of worst-case scenarios. [more]

From left: RentJuice’s David Vivero, Noah Rosenblatt of Urbandigs and a screenshot of RentJuice

San Francisco-based online rental management company RentJuice, which launched in 2009 and expanded to New York earlier this year, has launched a new Facebook-inspired feature.
The RentJuice Directory offers real estate pros the ability to browse and search for other real estate companies in their area, establish new partnerships, and send and receive a continual stream of rental listings, via one dashboard, the company said.
Sharing rental listings has always been tricky, with new property listings coming from various different sources, including big-money brokerages as well small, independent real estate firms. Sites such as listings and real estate information site Streeteasy.com and Brooklyn’s Multiple Listings Service,have made strides in bringing all the listings to one place, but the battle is never completely won.
While the majority of brokers say they embrace the market’s ever-growing transparency, some have responded by becoming less willing to share information than before. Hoping to give themselves an advantage in the market, some brokers hang on to listings and keep stum. [more]

From the October issue: While brokers know they’ve got to work all their sources to keep
business flowing, in this down market, leads from their managers are
more coveted than ever. While the practice of managers “feeding” certain brokers potential
buyers or sellers can lead to behind-the-scenes sniping between agents,
it’s a reality of the business. In a down market, fed leads are less likely to go to inexperienced
brokers, or those with few connections, because management typically
doles them out to top producers, sources said. “A new agent is unlikely to get fed high-quality leads,” said Noah
Rosenblatt, founder of the firm Urban Digs. “Usually, management feeds
leads to the most productive agents, because then you don’t have to
worry about a young agent not bringing the sale in.”

Blogger Noah Rosenblatt leaves Halstead Property (Animation by Derek Zahedi)

Well-known blogger Noah Rosenblatt has left his post as an associate
broker at Halstead Property to focus more attention on his popular real
estate analysis Web site, UrbanDigs.com, and launch a new consulting
business. Rosenblatt will continue to work as a real estate agent for now, but
his license is now being held by the newly founded company associated
with his Web site, UrbanDigs Analytics and Consulting. Over the next six to eight months, Rosenblatt and his partner, Jeff
Bernstein, will also redesign the Web site “to make it more social and
interactive,” and add a suite of analytical tools to help buyers and
sellers assess the state of the real estate market, Rosenblatt said. [more]