In other news (apolitical thread)...

[utee94]

It's probably caused by a bunch of rich Californians who saw Yellowstone moving in and buying things up and ruining everything in the state, tbh...

It's what they do...

[MikeDeTiger]

Obviously you have to look at the methodology...

But one key aspect is that it says "median" rather than "mean". That can sometimes be a more intuitive and useful metric; sometimes less.

Also note that this site says 80% of all Montanans live in or within 50 miles of their 7 largest cities. We might think of Montana as rural--but rather I think it means it's mostly empty, and clustered around those cities.

However another google search shows median Montana home prices being in the >$500K range.

It's probably caused by a bunch of rich Californians who saw Yellowstone moving in and buying things up and ruining everything in the state, tbh...

Median tends to be better when the set of numbers is skewed or not normally distributed.  Which, I kind of would assume is the case for the population set of home prices.  But who knows.  If accurate, I'm inclined to think median is more representative than mean in this case.

But don't listen to me.  I don't even know how much a good computer costs.  

[medinabuckeye1]

Obviously you have to look at the methodology...

But one key aspect is that it says "median" rather than "mean". That can sometimes be a more intuitive and useful metric; sometimes less.

Also note that this site says 80% of all Montanans live in or within 50 miles of their 7 largest cities. We might think of Montana as rural--but rather I think it means it's mostly empty, and clustered around those cities.

However another google search shows median Montana home prices being in the >$500K range.

It's probably caused by a bunch of rich Californians who saw Yellowstone moving in and buying things up and ruining everything in the state, tbh...

WRT methodology:
Two very important questions that come to my mind are:

• Is this based on sales in the last year or the value of all homes?  If it is sales only then the "rich Californians who saw Yellowstone" could REALLY swing it because there probably aren't all that many sales among Montana natives to begin with so a few thousand high-dollar homes sold to Californians could potentially skew the figures.  
• WRT to ranches as mentioned by @Cincydawg , are they differentiating between the value of the home and the value of the business?  This would be tricky with a family farm but if that was the issue I would think that it would pop up in other states such as Iowa ($220k), Nebraska ($259k) and Kansas ($229k).  

WRT to #1:
According to the census Montana has a population of a little more than 1M.  I couldn't find the # of households nor the average # of people per household (which I would have used to calculate the #) but I would guess 3-4 people per household which would mean something like 1/4 to 1/3 of a Million homes.  A few thousand rich Californians buying $1M houses would have only a negligible impact on the mean and median value of all homes in Montana because it would be diluted over 1/4 to 1/3 of a Million homes.  However, if you assume that the average family stays in their house for ~30 years then there would only be around 10k annual sales so a few thousand rich Californians could really skew those figures.  

WRT #2:
I wonder how they do handle that.  If I were an Ohio Farmer and I bought a thousand acres out in Western Ohio that was worth say $8,000 per acre that would be $8,000,000.  Assuming that a home and farm buildings (barns, silos, etc) were located on the property then the total sale price might be say $9M but this would represent something like $8.75M in business property (the tillable land and the agribusiness related structures) while the other $0.25M represented the value of the home and the land immediately surrounding the home.  So does that count as a $9M "home" because the total property is $9M or does it count as a $250k home because the actual home is only worth that?  

[utee94]

Median tends to be better when the set of numbers is skewed or not normally distributed.  Which, I kind of would assume is the case for the population set of home prices.  But who knows.  If accurate, I'm inclined to think median is more representative than mean in this case.

But don't listen to me.  I don't even know how much a good computer costs. 

More than $400, less than $4,000.  Hope that helps!

[betarhoalphadelta]

Median tends to be better when the set of numbers is skewed or not normally distributed.  Which, I kind of would assume is the case for the population set of home prices.  But who knows.  If accurate, I'm inclined to think median is more representative than mean in this case.

But don't listen to me.  I don't even know how much a good computer costs. 

Yeah, I would think median is probably generally more representative. But I highlight it because in some places it might skew if the distribution is wonky. 

• Is this based on sales in the last year or the value of all homes?  If it is sales only then the "rich Californians who saw Yellowstone" could REALLY swing it because there probably aren't all that many sales among Montana natives to begin with so a few thousand high-dollar homes sold to Californians could potentially skew the figures. 

I believe it's median sale price. 

And it's a relatively small state with small sample size (looks like Google is showing maybe 1K home sales per month), so a small number of sales could skew it upwards. The population also appears to be steadily growing, and if the growth is primarily rich[ish] transplants, that could certainly skew it upwards too. 

[medinabuckeye1]

And it's a relatively small state with small sample size (looks like Google is showing maybe 1K home sales per month), so a small number of sales could skew it upwards. The population also appears to be steadily growing, and if the growth is primarily rich[ish] transplants, that could certainly skew it upwards too.

That would make sense and it also likely means that even though the median sale price is ~$500k the median value of a home in Montana is likely less than half that but the turnover is higher for the more expensive homes.

[Cincydawg]

[SFBadger96]

Interesting. California, New York, and Illinois--four of the largest six states by population--all contribute more to the U.S. economy (by GDP) than their per capita share of the population. I think New York has the biggest proportionate difference, followed by California. Texas also punches above its already significant population weight. Florida, alas, does not. Washington and Massachusetts also punch GDP significantly above their population weight.

[utee94]

It's a bit of a silly graphic.  The financial wealth is concentrated in the financial centers.  Nothing surprising there.

So you're telling me that vast open areas of park land and farm land and no man's land, are not tremendous revenue generators?  Shocking!

Additionally, revenue generated from those lands, is still largely funneled through the financial centers, because that's where company headquarters are located. 

Looking at it more closely, that is probably one of the most worthless graphics I've ever seen.  Clearly intended to mislead and divide.  Pure trash.

[Cincydawg]

[Cincydawg]

[betarhoalphadelta]

Does anyone think about where to post things any more? 

Hmm... An infographic about 50% of GDP coming from the urban areas of the country when we have a highly-political divide that just HAPPENS to line up [largely] along rural vs urban lines. Hmmm... I can't imagine how this could cause problems in the apolitical thread!

Hmm... A whimsical and cryptic thing about crayons and Marines, in the area that the Marines are [potentially?] being deployed to handle civil unrest. Maybe you'd put that in the political thread that's talking--at length--about the area where said unrest exists. OR... You could make it funny and speculate that Army vets are trolling Marines because of long-standing inter-division joshing and put it Nubbz' whimsy thread. But in the apolitical thread? Yeah, that can't possibly go wrong!

Hmm... An infographic about WWI casualties. When we have an entire thread called OT- Weird History, and we have recently been discussing WWI and WWII strategy and decision-making. Because there's no way that'll drag THAT morass into the apolitical thread and turn the thread into war strategy... Which undoubtedly would NEVER get political, right? 

There's a part of me that thinks this is all just a deliberate strategy to troll me... But in the immortal words of the great philosopher Alexis Rose, "Trust me--people aren't thinking about you the way you're thinking about you."

But maybe, for once... You could all start thinking about the apolitical thread as a haven from this bullshit?

[utee94]

None of you are ever, EVER allowed to call out Texicans for being overly sensative again.  We have a new leader in the clubhouse.



Seriously though, this is not really a news thread, it's the catch-all discussion thread (as long as that discussion isn't political).  So I don't think the WWI thing necessarily belongs somewhere else.

The other two probably do though.

[betarhoalphadelta]

None of you are ever, EVER allowed to call out Texicans for being overly sensative again.  We have a new leader in the clubhouse.



Seriously though, this is not really a news thread, it's the catch-all discussion thread (as long as that discussion isn't political).  So I don't think the WWI thing necessarily belongs somewhere else.

The other two probably do though.

The WWI thing doesn't NOT belong here... It's just far MORE appropriate for the Weird History thread. 

I just posted in the Grumpy Old Man thread. I could easily have posted that here, and it wouldn't quite be out of place. It's just far MORE appropriate there.