In the years before the current housing crisis, the Urban Center at Cleveland State University regularly produced housing indicators for the city of Cleveland, Ohio, and other geographic subareas within the Cleveland metropolitan area. As the housing market deteriorated into crisis, traditional market price and volume indicators became less useful, and analysts at the Center faced the fundamental challenge of determining what was occurring in these local housing markets.

Many local jurisdictions are undoubtedly exploring this same, uncharted territory. Those who analyze local housing markets need to gauge the (sometimes volatile) health of that market. Although national and regional indicators (for example, the S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices) are available for analysis, they provide no information on local market performance, and information at the municipal or neighborhood level is often crucial to making strategic planning decisions.

This article presents four lessons the Center learned about Cleveland’s local housing market and the data and tools used to identify the lessons. Although these approaches may not be as useful in every market, they may serve as a starting point for similar analyses and discussion.