Why use a 13 month time period?

Why use a 13 month time period?

Market Review displays a 13-month spark line for each metric.  If you're wondering why it isn't just set to one year, you're not alone.  The first thing to understand is that metrics are only interesting in relation to something else.  If you read a headline that said "Last month, 500 homes were sold," that wouldn't mean much unless you knew how many homes were usually sold.  So it's important to have those points of comparison. 

In real estate, we generally use the reference points of either month-over-month (MoM) or Year-over-Year (YoY).  MoM means how is this month different from last month, like July vs June.  YoY means how is this month different from the same month last year, like July 2022 vs July 2021.  This YoY comparison is why we need a 13-month trend line.  If we only showed one year of data, that would let us compare July 2022 to August 2021, since there are only 12 months in a year.  We need to add that extra month to get the correct comparison, and that equals 13 months.. 

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