Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

Ken’s Dream House

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Back around the year 2000, I was strolling around the neighborhood when I saw an Open House sign about a block from where I live. It was a Sunday, the traditional day for open houses, so I thought I’d just look around and see what it was like and what it cost.

In the backyard there was the smiling real estate agent, but what caught my eye was something which surprised me: a coffee cart. A really nice one, too, with a barista at its side. There was a short menu of drinks he could make, and I thought to myself, “Cool, a free drink!” So I got myself a latte and pretended to be a potential buyer as I looked around. At the time, I thought it was pretty clever for a real estate agent to spend the extra money to make a house visit something pleasant.

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Real Estate Layers

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We only rolled out the awesome new Layers feature late last night, and I’m having a ball with it. As I mentioned, the one feature I really want to add is the ability to Save charts, so rest assured, that’s coming.

Let me offer an example I just did to show how Layers can be used. So let’s start with the sensible-sounding premise that interest rates have an influence on real estate. So I put the 15-year fixed mortgage in one layer and the IYR in another (note bene: I’m sure other mortgage rates might be better choices, but, meh, what the hell, I landed on this one). Importantly, I did a Flip on the interest rates, which inverts the scale (in other words, the bottom of the chart represents higher rates).

Already, we can see a very cool interaction between these two. Notice how interest rates seem to lead – – by a long time – -the real estate market?

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