UF’s Bergstrom Real Estate Center and The Market Distillery begin collaboration on residential real estate market trends

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UF’s Bergstrom Real Estate Center is pleased to announce a new collaboration with The Market Distillery, designed to provide real estate and related professionals with usable information regarding the trends in the residential real estate market. This collaboration was developed through the efforts of the Bergstrom Center’s Director Tim Becker (UF DBA ’23), Research Director Dr. Bill Hughes, The Market Distillery’s President Alex Stewart (UF DBA ’23) and UF’s Clinical Professor Dr. Steve Tufts.

“The Bergstrom Center strives to provide the real estate industry with applied research that is usable on a daily basis by real estate professionals,” Hughes said. “This collaboration allows the Bergstrom Center to expand our research into the residential real estate market, which is one of the largest and most interesting real estate markets in the nation. We are constantly looking for data and insight, and this collaboration has the potential to create unique value to Florida residential real estate professionals.”

The Market Distillery is an econometric forecasting think tank headquartered in Atlantic Beach, Fla. and led by Alex Stewart, a current UF DBA candidate. Stewart and Dr. Tufts, along with two additional partners, created the company specifically to distill the massive amounts of information available into terms that can be easily understood by real estate professionals, as well as home buyers and sellers. The principals in the firm combine extensive knowledge of residential real estate, mortgage banking, title policies, and homeowner’s insurance with data analysis capabilities to produce forecasts specific to local markets.

“The most frequent question asked of both real estate sales professionals, as well as mortgage bankers and related businesses, is “How’s the market?” states Stewart, a Jacksonville-based mortgage banker. “Unfortunately, the information flowing from the normal sources such as the national or local news can be flawed in one of several ways. First, it is usually an average across the broad national market when in actuality, residential real estate is hyper-localized. Second, it is usually backward-looking and based upon data that may be several months old. Third, news sources are occasionally more interested in selling oversimplified or emotionally charged news than providing fully accurate information to readers. Our processes address these issues.”

The Florida residential real estate market is the third largest market in the nation by population. There has been dramatic growth in the market over the last several years. Migration into Florida has been an area of intense interest for economists and civic planners. Future trends in population growth are of interest to many segments of the economy that are dependent upon residential real estate purchases.

“The Market Distillery had tremendous insight into the daily challenges faced by real estate, mortgage, title, and insurance professionals,” said Tufts, who was the founder and owner of one of the largest residential real estate brokerages in Florida prior to joining the UF faculty. “It is our goal to combine this knowledge with the data analytics capability of the Bergstrom Center to provide better information to the industry. The Florida Association of Realtors alone has in excess of 225,000 members. Add to this the mortgage bankers, the insurance agents, and other home purchase related businesses, and the population of people needing this type of forward-looking localized information is huge.”

For more information about the Bergstrom Real Estate Center, visit their website or email Tim Becker.

To learn more about The Market Distillery, visit their website and sign up for free updates or a full membership. You can also follow the distillery on Instagram @themarketdistillery or email Alex Stewart.