Built on data, not opinion.

Every indicator is ranked nationally. Every indicator has a published definition. Every location carries a confidence tier. When data is sparse, we tell you — we never hide it behind an inflated score.

The Combined Indicator Score

1. Each indicator is compared nationally. A location gets a 0–100 on each indicator against every other US location. A 90 on Gross Rental Yield means its yield is higher than 90% of locations.
2. Your top indicator counts most. Each indicator below it counts 60% as much as the one above. With seven indicators ranked, that is about 41%, 25%, 15%, 9%, 5%, 3% and 2% of the score, and the app shows each indicator's share under its rank. Your first two or three choices decide most of the result; anything past about the seventh adds very little.
3. On a paid plan you can set the percentages yourself. Custom weights always total 100% and stay in the order you ranked them — an indicator can count the same as the one above it, never more. Nothing else changes: the national comparison, the missing-data rule and the confidence ratings are identical. Scores are only comparable with other scores from the same set of weights, so screens that use yours are labeled "Custom weights"; public pages and emails always use the standard ones.
4. Those combine into one score from 0 to 100. It's a comparison, not a grade. Most locations land in the middle, and very few score above 85.
5. Missing data lowers the score. A location is marked down for every ranked indicator it has no data for, more so for your top indicators, and it needs data for at least two of your indicators to appear at all.

weight(rank n) = 0.6^(n - 1)
base     = Σ ( normalized_indicator × weight ) / Σ present weights
coverage = Σ present weights / Σ available weights
score    = base × √coverage × 100

The 12 leading indicators

Each indicator measures one part of supply or demand: how fast homes and rentals move, how much is for sale, and what rents and prices are doing. Every number is compared against all US locations, so it always has national context.

Property Standouts

The Combined Indicator Score tells you where demand is strongest. Property Standouts goes one level deeper — what to look at within a location. When you expand any ZIP, alongside its Trend card you'll see the standout asset type:

An "asset type" is a property type × bedroom count segment — for example, a 3-bedroom single-family home, or a 1-bedroom condo. The card shows that segment's median price, typical rent, dwelling size, typical age, lot size, Days on Market (first listing to pending), Days to Close (first listing to closing, from the same homes), sale-to-list ratio, price-cut rate (the share of sales whose last price change took them below the original asking price), and its headline appreciation.

How the figures are derived:

• Source: medians pooled from roughly the last 18 months of recorded home sales in each location.
• Appreciation: the annualized growth between the two most recent sale prices of the same property (a repeat-sales method, the principle behind the Case-Shiller index), taken as a median across qualifying homes — so it reflects real buyer-to-buyer price changes, not a model estimate. A pair is left out when the earlier sale happened before the year the home was built: that is the land changing hands, not the house appreciating.
• Impossible values: lot sizes are converted to square feet from whatever unit the record uses, and any figure that cannot be real — a lot under 300 sq ft, a dwelling under 200 sq ft, a build year in the future — is dropped before the medians are taken. A figure with too few sales behind it shows as a dash.
• Minimum-sample gating: a segment must have enough recent sales to qualify, and appreciation requires enough repeat-sale pairs. A thin, lucky cell can never win — if the data is too sparse, the cards simply do not appear for that ZIP.
• Coverage honesty: Property Standouts are shown only where the sales record supports them. They are naturally absent in non-disclosure states and very thin rural markets — we would rather show nothing than something unreliable.

Property Standouts describe past, recorded sales for information only. They are not a recommendation to buy or sell any property, and not investment advice — see the note at the bottom of this page.

Prices by property type, and market signals

Prices by property type and bedrooms (paid plans). Typical Value covers every home sold in a location. On a paid plan you can switch that one column to a property type (single-family, condo, townhome, multi-family), a bedroom count, or both. It uses the same method as Typical Value — the last 12 months of sales, with the top and bottom 10% of prices trimmed — and the same minimum of 10 sales. Where a view has fewer than 10 sales the cell shows a dash and the number of sales; we never substitute the all-homes figure. Your score and ranking do not change.

Market signals (free for everyone) describe what has recently changed in and around a location. They are facts about the recent past — not forecasts, and there is deliberately no combined "prospects" score. Each one is shown beside the US figure, because three-month and year-over-year comparisons are seasonal. Anything already in the results table, such as Days on Market, is not repeated here.

• Sales that had a price cut — ZIP level, from our own sales records. The share of sales whose last price change took them below the original asking price, for the latest three months against the three months before; it needs at least 10 sales in both periods.
• Home purchases bought as an investment — county level. The share of home-purchase mortgages where the buyer stated the property is an investment rather than their home, from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records every US lender must file. Published yearly, about six months after the year ends.
• Jobs, average weekly pay and the number of businesses — county level, each as the change on a year earlier, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. Published quarterly, about five months after the quarter ends.
• Unemployment rate — county level, for the newest month and the same month a year earlier, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Local Area Unemployment Statistics. Published monthly, about five weeks after the month ends.
• Income per person — county level, and its change on the year before, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Published yearly.
• New homes permitted — county level. Housing units authorised by building permits over the last 12 months against the 12 months before, from the Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey. Published monthly, about six weeks after the month ends.

County-level signals are the same for every ZIP in that county and are labeled as such. A trend in homes for sale is not shown yet: the way listings are counted changed during 2026, and we would rather show nothing than compare figures that are not alike. Any signal can reverse, and none of them predicts prices or rents.

Sources for the signals above: US Census Bureau (Building Permits Survey, American Community Survey), US Bureau of Labor Statistics (QCEW, LAUS), US Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (HMDA). These are US government works in the public domain. Abunsh is not endorsed by, or affiliated with, any of these agencies.

Confidence tiers

Each location carries a confidence tier. It is set by the weakest of three tests, and then marked down if the location's indicators swing sharply from month to month.

• Coverage: how many of our core indicators have data for the location this month.
• Sales volume: how many homes sold there in the last six months. Most sale-based indicators need at least 10 sales, so a location with 15 has numbers that blink in and out from one month to the next. Very High needs 40 or more sales, High 20 or more, Medium 10 or more.
• Consistency: whether any market indicator has appeared or disappeared in the last three months. None allows Very High; one or two caps the tier at High; three or more caps it at Medium.

Stabilitycomes last: a location with full data but indicators that swing wildly between months (for example, days-on-market jumping from 30 to 105) is downgraded — volatile inputs make a single month's score less dependable, and we would rather say so than present false certainty. Locations with too little indicator coverage are excluded entirely — we will not invent a score where one cannot be supported.

Separately, the app shows an amber ◐ Limited data marker on a location when the indicators you ranked highest have no data there — specifically, when the blank ones carry 40% or more of your weighting. In the Trend card those months are drawn as hollow points and left out of the trend, because a jump into or out of such a month is data turning up, not the market moving.

By default the app shows Very High and High tiers only. You can expand the filter to include Medium or Low — but we recommend treating those scores with corresponding caution.

Our data principles

Raw data is aggregated from a mix of free public sources and paid commercial feeds, then transformed into the leading indicators above. We do not rely on a single source for any indicator — every metric is cross-checked or derived from at least two independent inputs where possible.

• Transparency: The full formula above is the entire formula. There are no hidden adjustments, no editorial overrides, no "trust us" layers.
• Coverage honesty: Locations with insufficient data are excluded from results. Their absence is reported in the footer along with the eligible count.
• Comparability: Every indicator is normalized against the full US universe of locations in the current month. Local rankings are derivative of national context, not independent of it.
• Reproducibility: Given the same inputs, the same ranking produces the same scores every time. No randomness, no machine-learning black boxes.

Updates and history

Scores update monthly. When you expand a location, its trajectory — a sparkline of the Combined Indicator Score over the most recent months (up to seven), labeled with its first and latest scores, plus a sentence summarizing the move — is computed under your current ranking: prior months re-score live as you re-rank indicators, so every point in the series is apples-to-apples with today. The number of historical months available may grow over time.

If a core indicator was missing in the previous month for more than 95% of locations, the month-over-month delta is suppressed to avoid a misleading comparison. Newly launched indicators are handled separately: they are excluded from months before their launch (see the coverage rule above), so adding an indicator never suppresses deltas or distorts historical scores.

Important

Abunsh is a data and analytics tool. The Combined Indicator Score is a ranking, not a recommendation. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Abunsh does not provide investment, legal, tax, or financial advice. Always do your own due diligence and consult appropriate licensed advisors before making real-estate investment decisions.