Methodology & Definitions

MarketTimeline is a research portal for US residential real estate. We aggregate public-record sales, deed transfers, tax assessments, and listing histories into a single normalized dataset covering all 50 states, ~3,500 counties, ~43,000 cities, ~220,000 neighborhoods, and ~6.2M individual properties.

What we do: compute median prices, sales volumes, and appreciation rates from recorded transactions. Surface property-level histories — every recorded sale, listing event, and tax change. Identify flips, distressed sales, and tax-appeal candidates from underlying patterns.

What we don't do: we are not a brokerage, MLS, or active-listing marketplace. We do not show "homes for sale," generate buyer leads, or predict future prices. Our scope is historical and analytical.

Our primary inputs are county recorder of deeds filings — the public legal record of every real-property transfer in the United States. Deed records include the parties, the recorded sale price, the parcel identifier, and the recording date.

We supplement deed data with county assessor tax rolls (assessed values, parcel attributes, year built, lot size) and historical listing feeds (events such as LISTED, PRICE CHANGED, LISTING REMOVED, RELISTED, SOLD, and BUILDING PERMIT records).

Why no live listings? Live MLS feeds are licensed under restrictive terms that prohibit public republishing of granular fields. Our focus on historical public-record data sidesteps those restrictions and lets us serve every county we have coverage in without per-MLS gates.

Our dataset is currently complete and current. Recording lag varies by jurisdiction — many counties post deeds within 2–4 weeks of execution; some rural counties run 60–120 days behind. Aggregate statistics for the most recent two months are typically partial and revise upward as deeds finish recording.

Each geographic page shows the period its statistics cover. Appreciation rates use end-of-period medians and ignore partial trailing months.

Sale event

A property-history row with event_name = 'SOLD' and price BETWEEN 1,000 AND 500,000,000. The price floor excludes $1 quitclaim transfers, intra-family transfers, and other non-arm's-length recordings; the ceiling excludes obvious data-entry errors.

Flip

A pair of sale events on the same property where the second sale follows the first by ≤ 24 months with a positive gain. We store buy_date, sell_date, buy_price, sell_price, hold_days, and gain_pct.

Distressed sale

A sale event recorded with a foreclosure, short-sale, REO, or auction marker; or a sale below 70% of the property's prior assessed value with no intervening improvements.

Appreciation rate

For each geo we compute median sale price for the latest period and for the period ending 1, 3, 5, and 10 years prior. Rates shown — rate_1y, rate_3y, rate_5y, rate_10y — are simple percentage changes between those medians, not annualized.

Recorded sale prices reflect the recorded consideration, not necessarily market value. Some jurisdictions record symbolic prices on certain transfer types; we filter the most obvious cases but cannot detect every one.

Appreciation rates computed on small geos (rural ZIPs, small neighborhoods) can be volatile when underlying sales counts are low. We hide rates where the period sales count is below a minimum threshold.

Property attributes (beds, baths, sqft, year built) come from assessor records and listing feeds and may be out of date or absent. We do not verify them on the ground.

Historical coverage thins out before approximately 2010 in some smaller counties. Long-window appreciation series may be incomplete for those areas.

Every fact published on MarketTimeline is sourced from public records — deeds, tax rolls, and similar government filings — that are already published by counties and states. We do not collect, store, or display non-public information about residents.

We do not sell data or share user activity with advertisers. Aggregate, anonymized usage logs are kept for operational purposes only.

If you believe a property page contains inaccurate information, contact us with the property URL and the correction; we will review against the underlying public record.

MarketTimeline is provided "as is" for informational and research purposes. The data is sourced from public records and aggregated automatically; we make no warranty of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for a particular purpose, and accept no liability for decisions made in reliance on this site.

Nothing on MarketTimeline constitutes financial, legal, tax, or real-estate advice. Consult a licensed professional for advice on a specific transaction.

You may use the site freely for personal research. Bulk scraping, automated data extraction, and republication of compiled data are not permitted without prior written consent.