RealHouse is a national housing-market data platform that ingests federal and local public data sources to produce CBSA-level homebuilding metrics — permits, starts, under construction, completions, finished vacant inventory, and closings. The MVP targets the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land CBSA (26420) to validate the approach before expanding nationally.
RealHouse uses a two-tier data architecture. The federal backbone provides uniform, automatable national coverage through standardized Census and agency data products. The local systems layer provides higher-fidelity lifecycle data but is fragmented across jurisdictions, requiring per-metro connector work.
The federal backbone is consistent across geographies but lacks metro-level starts/UC/completions (NRC/NRS are national/regional only). The local systems layer can unlock these metrics through inspection events and certificates of occupancy, but varies by jurisdiction.
Since NRC starts/UC/completions are only published at national and regional level, we use a distributed lag model to estimate metro-level pipeline metrics from BPS permits.
Starts from permits via lag weights
Completions from starts via completion weights
Under-construction stock-flow identity
Finished vacant inventory
Note: The model has a ~9 month warm-up period where first quarters underestimate starts/completions. As of Phase 2, HMDA purchase-loan originations are wired into the finished-vacant estimate as the closings signal (previously a placeholder).
dim_cbsa — CBSA codes, names, delineation
vintage
bridge_cbsa_county — County-to-CBSA
membership mapping
fact_bps_permits — Monthly building permit
counts by CBSA, structure type, and revision vintage
fact_fhfa_hpi — Quarterly FHFA house price
index values by CBSA
fact_nrc_pipeline — National/regional housing
starts, under construction, and completions
fact_nrs_inventory — National new residential
for-sale inventory and months' supply
fact_bls_employment — Metro-area payroll
employment and unemployment rates
fact_census_pop — Annual population estimates
and migration components
fact_hmda_originations — Mortgage origination
aggregates by MSA/MD
fact_fred_series — FRED API economic time
series (mortgage rates, macro indicators)
fact_hcad_parcels — Harris County Appraisal
District parcel-level data
fact_houston_permits_agg — Aggregated Houston
permitting data
fact_permit_record — Individual permit
records from TPIA request
fact_inspection_event — Inspection events
tied to permits (foundation, framing, final/CO)
mart_pipeline_quarterly — Modeled starts,
under construction, completions, and finished-vacant inventory
per CBSA per quarter
The Next.js 15 dashboard (with shadcn/ui components and Recharts visualizations) provides six pages, all scoped to a CBSA. All pages are now implemented as of Phase 2:
| Page | Route | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Market Overview | /market/26420 |
6 KPI tiles (permits, starts, UC, completions, finished vacant, months' supply) + quarterly trend chart |
| Permits | /market/26420/permits |
Monthly permit time series, single-family vs total, year-over-year bars |
| Pipeline | /market/26420/pipeline |
Modeled starts/UC/completions chart, UC stock trend |
| Employment | /market/26420/employment |
Payroll trend, unemployment rate, year-over-year job growth |
| Prices | /market/26420/prices |
FHFA HPI trend, year-over-year price change, vs national |
| Demographics | /market/26420/demographics |
Population trend, migration components |
BPS permits ingestion, FHFA HPI ingestion, NRC/NRS calibration data, permit-to-start distributed lag model, and dashboard scaffold with market overview and permits detail pages.
BLS employment connector, Census PEP population connector, FRED API series connector, HMDA mortgage origination connector (Data Browser API), four new database migrations, and three new dashboard pages (employment, demographics, prices). HMDA closings are now wired into the finished-vacant inventory estimate.
HCAD parcel data ingestion, Houston permit aggregates, and TPIA lifecycle data (individual permits, inspection events, certificates of occupancy) when the public information request is fulfilled.
feat/phase2-employment-pop-hmda)