We’re always keen to post content provided by our readers and colleagues, so of course we’re glad to help out “The Registry” when the Publisher asks us for a favor:

Alex,

I hope you are doing well. I am writing to ask a small favor. Rob Le Eace and I are working on the CRACK real estate index. It’s an index that measures the health of the [real estate] industry by looking at Cars, Real vacations, Advertising, Coffee expenditure and Knowledge of hot spots. The results will be collected through an online survey here:

CRACK Real Estate Survey

And we’ll incorporate it in an article that Rob is writing for the next month’s issue. I’m going to post a link to it on our web site, too, and we’ll do a small email blast asking folks to complete it, but I was wondering if you’d be OK with posting it on your site, as well.

Anyway, it’s totally light hearted, and I hope you can help out.

Thanks very much in advance. Chat soon.

Best,
Vlad

As stated, we’re always glad to help and look forward to the results. We’ve long said our market (pre-bust) was like real estate on acid, but CRACK…we’re all ears.

[Update: To provide more insight to the CRACK method, here’s something from Rob La Eace:

The Men’s Underwear Index (MUI) has proven itself accurate enough to be regarded by even former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan as an index worthy of note. How does it work? Although most consider underwear a necessity, being that only you (and a few lucky others) can see your undies, imminent replacement upon recognizing that they are a bit tattered is not always priority one. This sentiment is magnified when the going gets tough. Thus, men buy less underwear during recessions and more underwear in good economic times. I guess you could say that undies were not the kind of “change” that Obama was speaking of. I couldn’t resist. I digress. By tracking the sales of men’s underwear, trends can be seen. In summer of 2009, one industry analyst forecasted that underwear sales would be down 2.3 percent for 2009—the first negative year of sales since data collection began in 2003. The good news is that it is predicted that sales will only be down .5 percent in 2010. Less bad. We like that.
In brainstorming with my editor, we came up with a semi-scientific way to have some fun, and maybe get a gauge of our market status and agent/broker confidence. As we know, actions speak louder than words. Rather than simply asking for opinion regarding the market let’s peer into the discretionary spending of our ranks to see if we can see any trends or signals. Calling upon our crack team of Registry Statisticians (and, NO “crack team” does not mean that they smoke it), we have created the C.R.A.C.K Index. This highly sensitive market gauge measures Cars, Regular vacations, Advertising budget, Coffee expenditures, and Knowledge of hot spots. For our, and hopefully your amusement, we have hit the pavement to survey as many managing brokers and agents as possible. We hope as a local real estate professional, that you can help by participating. The results of our survey will be in the February issue of The Registry.]