In their paper Consumer City, Ed Glaeser, Jed Kolko, and Albert Saiz argue that cities lost their manufacturing bases when they lost the transportation cost advantage.

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While trends vary by region, buyer search activity generally peaks in March and April, while seller listings peak in July, says Jed Kolko, chief economist at real-estate website Trulia.com.

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Generally, beach areas see the most online traffic during the summer, and skiing areas see the most in the winter, says Jed Kolko, chief economist and head of analytics at Trulia.

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Chief economist Jed Kolko says the Barometer has only been around for 18 months, but when the indicators peaked in late 2005 or early 2006 it would have been somewhere near 150%.

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Jed Kolko at Trulia shows that in nearly every market, potential buyers with an expected holding period of five years or more and a combined state and local marginal tax rate of 25 percent or higher are better off financially owning than renting.

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