Eddie Godshalk (photo left) recognizes that many home buyers relied, not only on their lenders, real estate agents, builders, and the media for information, but on numerous online and offline real estate price reporting services as well. For the author, most of these price reports were too general, and did not contain enough up to date data, for reaching rational decision making conclusions. To counter this often very misleading information, Eddie Godshalk offers an alternative. His computer based system uses much more highly targeted mapping of areas, and uses real time data to generate reports. For real estate agents and investors, the access to dynamic mapping of actual prices as they happen, risk is lowered considerably. Instead of relying on generalized, and often out of date information, mistakes regarding area and pricing can be reduced dramatically.For me, the power of the book is the author's premise that relying on incomplete, and often very wrong local information, led to many of the abuses in the housing bubble. Eddie Godshalk points out, in detail, how flawed and misleading information was spread through the media, and accepted throughout the entire real estate and lending industries as fact. People became susceptible to glossy and oversimplified charts that fueled greed to make quick money, and fear of missing out on expected profits. In their place, the book describes the crucial importance of examining real time, dynamic information on a street by street basis. Better information helps the home buyer, investor, agents, and lenders to better assess risk and reward for a given locally mapped area. Within areas of collapsing prices, pockets of genuine real estate values can be uncovered, while leaving other areas alone entirely.
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