NAREE University

NAREE University at #NAREE2022
Excel for Real Estate Journalists

Workshop Leader: Charles Minshew, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Moderator: NAREE President Eileen McEleney Woods, Boston Globe

Excel for Real Estate Journalists - Part 1 - 2:00 PM EST Friday, August 26 on Zoom

Whether you’re new to Excel or you’re familiar with spreadsheets, spend an hour getting up to speed on Microsoft Excel. Learn how to sort, filter and perform basic analysis on your data.

Excel for Real Estate Journalists - Part 2 - 3:00 PM EST, Friday, September 16 on Zoom

Working with real estate and tax data can already be complicated enough when you’re collecting it from multiple sources. Getting it into the same format is key to analyzing trends in your market. Spend an hour learning strategies on how to clean your data to get it into the best shape for analysis.

Excel for Real Estate Journalists - Part 3 - 8:00 AM EST, Thursday, October 13 in person at the Westin Buckhead Atlanta

You’ve become familiar with Excel, you have clean data and you’re ready to analyze it for your next big story. We’ll discuss some more advance ways to analyze your data with pivot tables so you can quickly spot trends. Register here for NAREE’s full conference Oct 11-14 in Atlanta.

NAREE University Sessions at #NAREE2021

March 31st, 2021 at 1:00 PM EDT - Mining Data for Award-Winning Real Estate Stories

Thanks to NAREE Vice President Eileen Woods, Boston Globe, who has been heading up the 2021 sessions throughout the year and at the Annual Conference to be held in the fall.

Discussion on mining data for award-winning stories -- with helpful databases, tips for recognizing poor methodology, and expert advice on wrangling all those data sets. Summary by 2021 President Jeff Collins below and linked here.

Moderator:

• Eileen Woods, Boston Globe and NAREE Vice President

Panelists:

• Stefanos Chen, New York Times

• Ethan Rothstein, Bisnow

• Mary Shanklin, Fifth Estate Media and former Orlando Sentinel reporter

Writing with numbers: Good data can lead to compelling tales

By Jeff Collins, Orange County Register and NAREE President

Suppose you’re trying to figure out how many homeowners are struggling to pay their mortgage in your region. Or how many tenants are behind in their rent.Where do you go? Ouija Board? Tea leaves? Oracle of Delphi? A better bet, says Fifth Estate Media founder Mary Shanklin, would be the U.S. Census.And in particular, the census’ new Household Pulse Survey. “The census is notorious for really giving us a trailing indicator,” Shanklin said during a March 31 NAREE University Live held via Zoom. “But the good news is ... the census (now) has a more real-time release.”Shanklin was one of three speakers at the March 31 NAREE U, one of a series of online training sessions for real estate journalists launched during the pandemic in 2020.Other speakers included Ethan Rothstein, deputy managing editor for the online commercial real estate news site, Bisnow; and Stefanos Chen, real estate writer for the New York Times. Rothstein demystified the world of commercial real estate data, giving writers insights on where to find the best numbers and how to use them. Chen gave examples of how to overcome gaps in data sources and described how he once used dog license data to track gentrification. The Household Pulse Survey has four key metrics relevant for covering the pandemic, said Shanklin, a University of Central Florida journalism instructor and former real estate writer for the Orlando Sentinel. They include telework, housing insecurity, the likelihood of eviction and foreclosure and difficulty paying for the usual household expenses. The Household Pulse, which has numbers for the nation, states and key U.S. metro areas, has data as recent as two weeks ago. “It is warp speed compared to what we’ve been used to with the census,” Shanklin said. “The world’s been turned upside down in the last year. It seems like 2019 is archaic. So that is a better, more real-time set of data.”Other key census tools, Shanklin said, include the American Community Survey, which includes such housing data as the number of owner-occupied housing units, renter vacancies, mobile homes, the age of housing stock and population mobility, Shanklin said. The latest numbers are from 2019, with 2020 numbers expected as soon as September.
The ACS, available at data.census.gov, breaks data down to the county level. Another tool is Google Data Explorer, which bundles different types of metrics — birth rates, death rates, net migration — to help you visualize trends.
Commercial data
The census has good housing data, but is not as rich for commercial real estate.So where do you go to find trends in office occupancy as more and more people work from home? Where can you find data on industrial and warehouse trends as e-commerce booms? Rothstein, who specializes in commercial real estate, explained that virtually all the major commercial brokerages publish regular market reports on their websites on such topics as the office, retail and industrial markets.Newmark and JLL are the best because they give the most numbers, including the underlying numbers for their charts, Rothstein said. “If you open these reports, most of them are words,” Rothstein said. “When we’re doing research for data, we don’t really want the words. It’s interpretation. For the most part, I tend to ignore what they write, and I go to their charts and I go to their tables and I see what the numbers say.”Often, the narrations use words like “momentum” and “growth.” “They’re trying to make you see the numbers in a positive light,” when in reality, that may not be the case, he said. “It’s certainly spin city.” It’s also important, he said, to know the difference between vacancy and availability. Availability numbers include buildings under construction and leases that are expiring. Hence, availability numbers are more of an indication of the amount of space on the market than vacancy rates.
Gaps in data
Chen often struggles to find housing data in parts of New York City, where multiple listing services don’t exist. What numbers exist often have gaps. “We do not typically pull data from any one source,” Chen said. “When you trust a source, be aware that what’s in there might omit certain things. The omission itself could be the story.”Some sources, like StreetEasy, get all their information from the brokers, and the brokers have an incentive to paint a rosier picture, Chen said. Some new condo sellers report, for example, 50% of their units are under contract, when in fact, they’re only reporting sales for a portion of their buildings. When Chen got more complete data from the state, he learned just one in four new condos had been sold.Chen advised taking an Excel course so you can sort your data and get a clear picture of trends.“Having that background has helped a lot,” he said. Here’s a link to Shanklin’s tip sheet for census data. Links Rothstein finds helpful are: JLL, Newmark and Real Capital Analytics.

Here are the full URL's for the links above:

Shanklin’s Tip Sheet

Links Rothstein finds useful include:

• JLL

• Newmark

• Real Capital Analytics
  

NAREE University Sessions at #NAREE2020

May 7, 2020 - Story Selection in a Changed World

A big thank you to panelists and participants who logged in for "Story Selection in a Changed World” on Thursday, May 7 at 7:00 PM Eastern. If you missed it, check out Michelle Jarboe's recap here.

Coronavirus Coverage Challenges and Lessons Learned so far:

• Dealing with the difficulty of not being able to plan ahead

• Trying to find unique angles when everyone is covering the same story

• Getting story ideas without informal meetings

• Talking to sources out of their element

• Getting sources to talk when little is known and no one wants to look bad 

Moderator:

Catie Dixon, Bisnow Managing Editor and NAREE 2020 President

Panelists:

• Eileen Woods, Boston Globe Sunday Real Estate Editor and NAREE 2020 Board Member

• J. Scott Trubey, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Reporter and NAREE 2020 Board Member

• Suzann Silverman, Commercial Property News/Multi-Housing News Editorial Director

• Eli Segall, Las Vegas Review-Journal Reporter

April 16, 2020 - How to Do Our Jobs in a Changed World

Our inaugural NAREE U Live panel, “How to Do Our Jobs in a Changed World” took place on Thursday, April 16 at 7:00 PM Eastern. If you missed it, here’s Riley McDermid’s summary.

Coronavirus Coverage Challenges and Lessons Learned so far —

• When the newsroom has gone digital (Coping with changes in your routine, WiFi snafus, and more)

• When sources work from home, get sick, or are laid off (Dealing with how this impacts you; maintaining source relationships when you can only get coffee digitally)

• When you are no longer covering real estate exclusively and you are tapped to cover the situation

Moderator:

Catie Dixon, Bisnow Managing Editor and NAREE 2020 President

Thought Leaders

• Beth DeCarbo, Wall Street Journal Columnist and NAREE 2020 Chairman of the Board

• Jeff Collins Orange County Register and NAREE Vice President

• Steve Brown, Dallas Morning News Real Estate Editor and NAREE 2016 President 

• Dion Haynes, Washington Post Real Estate Editor and NAREE 2018 President

• Stefanos Chen, New York Times Reporter and NAREE Member