CMAScope
Sign inStart free

Methodology & data notes

Where the data comes from

Every number on CMAScope comes from the Realtor.com® Economic Research data library, which aggregates MLS-listed for-sale homes across the country. Monthly inventory metrics cover July 2016 onward at national, state, metro (CBSA), county and ZIP levels. Market hotness covers August 2017 onward for the ~300 largest metros, their counties and ZIPs. A weekly national file provides the freshest year-over-year pulse.

The hotness score

Realtor.com's hotness score is an equal-weight blend of two 0–100 percentile scores: a supply score based on how quickly homes go pending (median days on market — faster is hotter) and a demand score based on listing page views per property. A hotness rank of 1 is the hottest market at that geography level.

What we compute ourselves

The source files ship month-over-month and year-over-year columns, but we recompute every delta from the underlying history series at load time and reconcile against the published values (typically 100% within ±0.5pp). Derived metrics — price-cut share, $/sqft vs national, price percentile among peers, and the market momentum z-score (price direction up, inventory and days-on-market down = hot) — are calculated from the reconciled series.

Quality flags

Realtor.com flags month/geography combinations affected by coverage changes (quality_flag = 1). Rankings and screeners exclude flagged rows by default; trend charts keep them so series stay continuous. Roughly half of ZIP-level rows carry a flag in some months — ZIP data is best used for direction, not precision.

Known limitations

  • Listing data, not closed sales — prices are asking prices.
  • Hotness covers only the ~300 largest metros and their geographies.
  • The weekly file is national-only and publishes YoY deltas, not levels.
  • Small markets can swing hard month to month; we filter rankings by market size where noted.

Attribution

Data is attributed to Realtor.com® Economic Research on every chart, export, embed and API response, per their attribution guidelines.