More Maps!

Because who doesn't love maps?

Polar Donkey just sent me some maps that prove his point (comments re: Fill 'er up) that, with so many employers located along Germantown Parkway, people might gravitate there instead of the urban core.

In this map of total employer establishments by zip code, downtown does have a lot of employers, but so do big chunks of Cordova and East Memphis. (Click to enlarge.)


What I think is interesting about this 1990 commute map is that the highest commute time on the map is 17-18 minutes (in red). Most people in the area had a less than 15 minute commute.



But when you compare that to the 2000 commute map, a commute of 1 to 18 minutes (remember, 17-18 miles was the longest commute in 1990) is the shortest commute. Sure, the longest commute on the 2000 map is 26 minutes (and comparatively, that's not horrible) but the Frayser commute almost doubled, from 12 to 14 minutes to 23 to 24 minutes. And in Whitehaven, you see basically the same thing.


Thanks, Polar Donkey!

Orange is the New Red

In what's headlined the Map of Misery, the Economist has a story (with map of misery, natch) this week that suggests the nation has only hit the halfway point in the housing bust.

The map, from the Federal Reserve, shows the change in the housing price index by county from the last quarter in 2006 to the same time in 2007. And it's color-coded. The hotter the color, the worse things are in that state (sorry, California and Florida and, um, Nevada? I get Vegas, but this was done by county.)

I've heard that, generally, Memphis is immune (or more immune than other parts of the country) to these types of market fluctuations. Mostly because real estate prices here haven't been driven up by enormous demand or boatloads of Memphians with gobs of extra cash to spend. So even if the market corrects itself downward, it doesn't have that far to go.

But if you look at Memphis' little corner on the map, you might notice that it's light orange.

So home prices aren't decreasing, but they are staying roughly the same. Because of the conventional wisdom about demand here, I can only assume that the supply side of the equation (foreclosures?) is driving down prices.

And here's more good news from The Economist: "The discrepancy between supply and demand suggests that prices could fall a lot more. By historical standards there is a huge glut of unsold homes on the market. The homeowner-vacancy rate—which includes all vacant homes for sale—has soared to a record level of 2.9%, which means that there are some 1.1m 'excess' houses for sale compared with the average between 1985 and 2005."

Well, at least they came up with an appropriate title for their map.