If you are interested in keeping a finger on the pulse of national real estate, I can’t recommend Calculated Risk highly enough. I’ve been following Bill McBride since the mid 2000s, when he was sounding the alarm about NINJA loans and subprime mortgages. He was also anonymous for years, which lent a sense of mystery. His co-blogger at the time, Tanta, wrote an especially illuminating series of posts on the mechanics of mortgages. She makes it fascinating with her knowledge and tone.
His specialty is graphs and commentary on those graphs. He covers a disparate set of data sets (the hotel industry, the trucking industry, restaurants, architectural billings, demographics), as well as more traditional ones (Fed reports, Case Shiller, housing starts). He also posts a weekly schedule of upcoming economic reports and events. The two problems I have with the blog are: there are a lot of ads on the site (which you can avoid by using an RSS reader) and that he’s too prolific and that you have to either commit a substantial portion of time or skim along all the data he’s made available.
Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Blue Sky