One online financial market wants investors to roll the dice on the nation’s bubbliest housing markets, including the seemingly unstoppable New York one.
HedgeStreet.com announced in late May that its users can now speculate on the direction of home values in real estate markets in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, San Diego and San Francisco. Pick the right direction of the markets in these metro areas and win.
Basically, it works like this: HedgeStreet lets users buy and sell yes/no and variable housing price futures called “hedgelets.” Users bet on whether median prices on existing single-family homes in the six housing markets will go up or down over three- and six-month periods.
Nearly 2,500 housing hedgelets were being traded as of mid-July, HedgeStreet told The Real Deal, with New York accounting for about 450. Miami, however, was the most traded housing market at about 880 hedgelets or more than one-third of the total. Los Angeles was second with 475.