I had a meeting in Crossroads today (a neighborhood of Bellevue, WA) that brought back all sorts of memories because it had been so long since I had set foot in the Crossroads Mall where I spent so much time as a kid. In 2nd and 3rd grade, I lived nearby in Lake Hills and biked to the mall to visit Norm Johnson’s Sportscards virtually every week. I lived off 159th Street right near Phantom Lake Pool, in this exact house.

I drove by the house today on my way home, to see what had changed. What I was really wondering was whether many homes in the neighborhood had been renovated/rebuilt…or if the neighborhood was largely the exact same as it was 20 years ago. I found out my old house has a new front yard with a rockery (it used to be all grass). That said, it appeared virtually none of the homes on the street had changed much.

Contrast that to Queen Anne in Seattle where I’ve been staying with a friend the last month. There is construction everywhere.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was some way to see a heatmap of homes/neighborhoods that had been renovated/re-built? That would seem to be a pretty good indicator of healthiness of a hyper local real estate market.

Is anyone tackling this? Zillow? Realtor..com? Porch?