Understanding and Using Vermont Real Estate Data Reports
Real Data has designed its reports and subscription plans to help you get the most out of the available Vermont real estate transfer data. Vermont real estate transfer data is actually very good and useful but it is important that you understand at least the following points about the data in order to use it effectively and work around its limitations. These points will also help you understand Real Data's report design and subscription plans. Real Data publishes two different reports for Vermont, The Vermont Location Index and the Vermont Special Sales Report.
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Processing by the State of Vermont and Real Data Corp
Using the Vermont Location Index
Real Data compiles the data from the real estate transfer tax returns filed by the parties to the sale. All of the information that the filing parties provide on the returns is subject to their interpretation of the Vermont Department of Taxes filing requirements. This includes such important items as property type and usage codes. The state provides standardized codes but the parties sometimes misinterpret or omit these. In addition, the parties are left to themselves to identify the property that was sold and must make up their own property location description. There are no standardization guidelines for property location.
Once the parties complete the return, the return is filed in the town where the property is located. The town collects these returns and periodically forwards them to the State. There is no specific time requirement for the towns to send these returns to the State. The towns therefore send batches of returns to the state largely on their own schedule and at their own convenience. When the towns do send in the returns there is no guarantee that they will submit all the returns that are in their possession at the time. The towns can retain any return and send it in to the state with a later batch.
Processing by the State of Vermont and Real Data Corp
The Vermont Department of Taxes also processes the returns on its own schedule. This schedule varies with the seasons and the other data processing loads on the Department. At Real Data, the additional processing required to edit, publish and distribute the reports adds about two weeks on average.
Lack of currency is the most frequently cited problem with the Vermont data. Historically this has been the case and to some extent it still is the case. The situation is actually quite a bit better than many people think. Here are some important points with respect to data currency.
First, the data has actually been getting much more current over the past several years. In the past much of the data was three to six months old before it could be published. Now, each month when we publish our reports, almost half of all towns statewide have a significant amount of data for the most recent month before publication! Eighty to ninety percent are mostly complete for the second month back! This is a great improvement from earlier years.
Second, much of what has been perceived as poor overall currency has in fact been differing currency among the towns. From the discussion above about the filing process, it is apparent that the towns will be current to different dates. You must know how current the report is for each town you want to use. If you don't know this, you have no way to know where to start looking in the town records for sales that have not yet been reported. Add to this the fact that you have to assume the worst case based on your experience in the towns where you do business. Real Data reports give you the most recent date for which sales are included in the report for each town. Our reports also give you some idea of the concentration of sales by month going back in time.
Third, much of what is perceived to be a "currency" problem is actually an "organization" problem. You never know in advance exactly when any given sale will enter the system. From the discussion above about the filing process, it will be apparent that there is never "closure" in Vermont real estate sales reporting and reporting can never be considered truly complete for any past calendar period. There is never a time when a final report can be produced for a previous filing calendar year and be considered truly complete. Appearances to the contrary are simply appearances. This is why Real Data gives you an eighteen-month summary each quarter. You get a single "rolling snapshot of the market for the most recent calendar period and you can almost always find what you want by looking at the most recent report plus a maximum of two updates. We do understand that this increases the volume of paper you get but there is simply no other way to ensure that you get a very complete sales listing. See the section below on Using the Vermont Location Index for more information.
Using any other reporting plan increases your chances of missing sales altogether, requires more reports and leaves you with no good way to predict which report will have the sale you want. The more reports you have to look in to find what you want, the more likely you are to miss the information you want even if it is there. Combine this with the second point above and its easy to see why so many people can't find what they want and simply put it down to lack of currency. Real Data reports go a long way toward solving these problems.
Fourth, comparable sales data is generally good for at least two to three years depending on market conditions. While new data is the most valuable we are now able to publish the bulk of the data within three months of the sale. We estimate that better than 90 % of Vermont sales data is available in our reports for at least 90 % of its useful life as comparable sales information. We (and everyone else) would like to improve on these percentages but the reports are eminently useful even as things stand now.
Fifth, Real Data is evaluating the possibility of making the Vermont data available here on this site in a fashion similar to the New Hampshire Teledex system. To see how this might work, you can try out Teledex by returning to our Home Page and following the Teledex links. Making the data available in this fashion would go a long way toward solving the remaining currency and organizational problems discussed in this section. We would put up the entire period of record back into the late 1980's and the system would be updated each week with new sales data. If you are interested in such a system, please let us know. The more interest we get, the more likely we will be to do it.
The lack of standardization of the location information has been another problem. The raw location information that comes from the returns is very rough. Filers use non-standard free form descriptions of the property location. To make a useful location index to the sales, Real Data edits all the location information in context with a "standardization dictionary". This dictionary contains a standardized set of Vermont street and place names that Real Data has developed over the past twelve years. The dictionary is now mature enough to be really good and it is still getting better all the time. By editing the raw incoming data against this dictionary, we are able to vastly improve the location data and create "indexable" street and location information. Our standard index reports are sorted by the resulting location information within each town.
Over the years countless real estate professionals have proven that the easiest way to find the best comparable sales is to use the process of elimination. They start from a list of all possible comparables and work backward by eliminating the poorer prospects until only the best possible sales are left. This is why you need the Vermont Location Index. The index is the most comprehensive listing available of real estate sales in Vermont and it should be your "first source" when starting to look for comparable sales. The index does not contain everything you will want to know about each sale but it is by far the best place to start looking and create your initial list. Once you have a list of possibilities, verify them using the town records and fill in the details from other sources of data such as your own records or MLS.
Why buy the index if you have to go to the towns anyway? Most of the towns keep only grantor and grantee indexes not a location index. To find what you want in the town records you need to know the name(s) of the parties to the sale. Otherwise, if your time is worth anything at all, it simply isn't practical or efficient to find what you want by shuffling randomly through the town records.
If you need to search by criteria other than street or location consider subscribing to our Vermont Special Sales report. This statewide quarterly report covers the following four types of property: Improved Commercial and Industrial, Multifamily and Apartments, Agricultural and Land. These four property types are cross-indexed by: location, price, acreage and use. For more information on this extraordinarily useful report request a data sheet or call.
Using the Vermont Location Index
Using the index is simple. Look for sales in the towns of interest by searching through streets or locations that are likely to have comparable sales (be sure to check the "NAs" to cover sales with no location given). Start with the most recent quarterly eighteen-month summary and any updates. Check the "most recent date of recording" in the statistics page of each report. The report does not contain any sales more recent than this. If you want these most recent sales, you will have to go to the town or wait for the next report. Most sales are now in by the third month back from the date of the quarterly summary so you should find most of what you want in no more than the three most recent reports. If you can't find what you want, start backward through past summaries. Each past summary will include the next three months back. Continue until you: (a.) find what you want, (b.) get back past the time you know any particular sale took place, or (c.) get back past the time when any sales could be used because they are too old.
Remember that there is no guarantee when a sale will enter the reporting system. If the town reports a sale in a very timely fashion, that sale will likely be included in the first summary report published after the sale date. That same sale would appear in the following five summaries and would drop out after six quarters (eighteen months). Experience shows that sales can (and do) come in at any time in this cycle. If it takes a town nine months to report its sales, those sales might appear in only two or three summaries before they are dropped out. By definition any given quarter (3 months of data) will be most complete the last and final time it is printed before being dropped out of the summary. This is why you need all the books. We republish eighteen months at a time to minimize the chances of a sale not showing up in any of the summaries. To the extent that you get less-than-all of the summaries your chances of missing sales goes up significantly with each summary you miss.
Important - For the above reasons, there is no way to guarantee that even with an eighteen-month summary, you will get all the sales. You will get the vast majority. We doubt that more than one or two percent will be missed. However, if a return does not come through the reporting system until near the end of or after the eighteen-month period, that sale will likely never be included in any of our reports.
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