Housing · Fear & Greed
Methodology

How we compute housing fear & greed.
Public data, two gauges, four countries.

Most sentiment trackers are black boxes. We publish every component, every weight, every public data source, and every honest limitation. The methodology is the product — if it isn't auditable, it isn't useful.

The two-gauge framework

Stock-market sentiment is roughly one-dimensional. Fear and greed track price momentum, breadth, options skew, junk-bond spreads, and the like — all signals that point at the same question: is the market priced for optimism or for pessimism right now?

Housing is different. A city can be wildly expensive and cooling (think US coastal markets in 2023). A different city can be affordable and surging (think Calgary 2024-25). The same market can be both unaffordable and stagnant after a rate-hike cycle. Forcing those into a single number throws away the distinction that actually matters for buyers and observers.

So we publish two scores, each 0-100, for every market:

Affordability (0-100)

How reachable housing is for a typical buyer right now, normalized against the market's own ten-year history. The components, weighted 50/30/20:

  • Price-to-income (50%): Median home price divided by median household income. Compared to the same market's ten-year range. The most-cited affordability metric globally.
  • Mortgage payment burden (30%): Monthly amortized payment on the median home at current rates, as a percentage of median household income. Captures the rate-hike effect that price-to-income misses.
  • Price-to-rent (20%): Median home price divided by annualized rent on a comparable property. Cross-checks via the rental equivalent.

A score of 80 means the market is more affordable than 80% of the last decade for that same market. A score of 20 means the opposite. It is not a cross-market comparison — Toronto and Austin each get scored against their own histories, not against each other. That distinction matters and we'll re-emphasize it below.

Momentum (0-100)

How hot the market is right now. Components weighted 40/25/20/15:

  • Year-over-year price growth (40%): Official price-index YoY change.
  • Months of inventory (25%): Active listings divided by trailing-three-month sales pace. Tight inventory drives momentum.
  • Days on market (20%): Median days from listing to under-contract.
  • Sale-to-list ratio (15%): Average final sale price as a percentage of original asking price — capturing whether buyers are paying over or under asking.

Same 0-100 scale, normalized against the market's own ten-year history.

How they combine

We don't combine them. The whole point is that they often disagree and that disagreement is the analytical signal. The four regime quadrants:

  • Low affordability + High momentum — bubble watch. The market is unaffordable and still running hot.
  • Low affordability + Low momentum — expensive stagnation. Often where high-cost markets sit after a rate-hike cycle.
  • High affordability + High momentum — recovery underway. Cheap and heating up.
  • High affordability + Low momentum — buyer's market. Cheap and cooling.

Where each city sits today is on its city page.

Per-country differences

Each country uses its own headline price index, mortgage benchmark, and listings data, because there is no single global housing dataset and the locally-canonical sources are usually the best ones.

United States

  • Price index: Case-Shiller 20-City for major metros, NAR median for non-CS markets
  • Mortgage rate: Freddie Mac PMMS 30-year fixed, via FRED
  • Inventory & days-on-market: Redfin Data Center monthly
  • Builder sentiment leading indicator: NAHB Housing Market Index, monthly

Canada

  • Price index: CREA Home Price Index
  • Mortgage rate: Bank of Canada 5-year posted and effective rate
  • Listings: provincial real estate boards (TRREB, REBGV, CREB, QPAREB)
  • Affordability cross-check: StatCan household debt-service ratio

Australia

  • Price index: CoreLogic Daily Home Value Index — closest thing to a real-time housing index anywhere
  • Mortgage rate: RBA average variable rate series
  • Weekly leading indicator: Domain auction clearance rates (esp. Sydney/Melbourne)
  • Affordability: dwelling price-to-income ratios from ABS data

United Kingdom

  • Headline price index: Nationwide HPI — monthly, fastest release (last working day of the month)
  • Cross-check: Halifax HPI
  • Mortgage rate: Bank of England composite 2-year fixed
  • Weekly leading indicator: Rightmove asking-price index

What we deliberately don't do

  • We don't predict prices. No "buy now" or "sell now" framing anywhere on the site. We publish where the market sits today and let you decide what that means.
  • We don't make cross-city comparisons claim more precision than they have. Each city's gauge is normalized against its own ten-year history. A Toronto affordability of 18 means Toronto is at the harder-than-history 18th-percentile for itself, not that Toronto is harder to buy in than Sydney at 22.
  • We don't include commercial real estate. Different drivers, different audience, different data sources. Out of scope.

Data licensing and reuse

Our scores are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You can embed, quote, screenshot, or republish them in any context (commercial or not) provided you credit the source.

Underlying public data is attributed to its original sources on each market page and consolidated on /data-sources.

Update cadence

Three crons:

  • Daily (22:00 UTC): Homebuilder and REIT stock prices for the leading-indicator component on every page. The only daily-fresh signal in residential.
  • Weekly (Friday 23:00 UTC): Mortgage rate releases, MBA applications, Australian auction clearance rates, Rightmove asking-price index.
  • Monthly (5th of month, 23:00 UTC): Case-Shiller, CREA HPI, Nationwide HPI, Halifax HPI, CoreLogic HVI summary, NAR existing home sales, NAHB HMI.

Each page shows the most recent refresh time and the next expected official data release. We don't pretend the data is more real-time than it is.

Frequently asked
Why two gauges instead of one?
Housing markets are two-dimensional in a way that stock-market sentiment isn't. A city can be both unaffordable and cooling (a bubble that is starting to break). Another can be both affordable and surging (a recovery underway). Forcing those into a single number erases the most useful distinction. Affordability tells you whether prices are reachable. Momentum tells you whether they are moving. Together they give you a regime read.
How often is the data updated?
Three cadences. Daily: listed homebuilder and REIT stock prices, our only truly real-time signal. Weekly: mortgage rate releases (Freddie Mac PMMS, BoE composite, BoC posted, RBA series), MBA application volume, Australian auction clearance rates, Rightmove asking-price index. Monthly: official price indices (Case-Shiller, CREA HPI, CoreLogic HVI, Nationwide HPI), NAR existing home sales, NAHB builder sentiment.
Why not include rental yield, vacancy, or other data?
V1 holds the methodology to four affordability components and four momentum components per market so the calculation stays auditable. Rental yield, vacancy rates, mortgage origination volume, foreign buyer share, and household formation are all real signals we may layer in for later versions. Adding them now would be premature without a v1 baseline to compare against.
Why does each country use a different price index?
Because there isn't one global index. Case-Shiller is the gold standard in the US. Canada uses CREA's national HPI with a clear methodology. Australia's CoreLogic Daily HVI is the closest thing to a real-time index anywhere. The UK has four competing indices (Nationwide, Halifax, ONS, Land Registry) and we lead with Nationwide because it releases on the last working day of the month with the shortest lag and is built on actual mortgage approvals. We cross-check against the others where possible.
What about commercial real estate, REITs, or industrial property?
Out of scope for housing.feargreedchart.com. The data sources, drivers, and audience for commercial real estate are different enough that a separate site would serve them better. Listed REITs appear here only as one momentum component — they're a leading indicator for residential, not the subject.
What are the limitations of this data?
Honest list: monthly indices lag by 2-8 weeks. Different country indices use different methodologies (repeat-sales, hedonic, valuation-based) so cross-country comparison is directional, not exact. Median prices smooth over mix-shift (a market with more luxury sales will look hotter even if individual property values are flat). City-level affordability uses metro-level median income, which understates affordability in the central city itself. We document these on each page where they matter.
Is the data free to use?
Yes, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You can embed, quote, screenshot, or republish the gauges in any commercial or non-commercial context provided you credit the source as "housing.feargreedchart.com." The underlying public data is from sources we attribute on each page.