Peer Review

FRED Real Estate Indices,Chart Creation, and Chart Extraction into Microsoft® Power Point®

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Jun 28, 2021 by Business

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Extracting Real Estate Specific Indices from the Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED) One of the most repetitive tasks in the real estate market is that of creating investor presentation(s). This material instructs on the data gathering process to more easily download and analyze the data.

The current process is a three step process: (i) download the data from FRED, or other economic data website(s); (ii) manually clean and import data into a new Microsoft® Excel® tab, and create an appropriate chart; and (iii) transfer each chart into Microsoft® PowerPoint®.

Type of Material:

Development Tool

Recommended Uses:

This tool can be used as a teaching tool by a Microeconomics or real estate instructor or practitioner when applying read data from the Fed to reflect the application of such data in real-life events. -
Other states can also review development tool and customize the data and the procedures to their own states
This is a very specific focused learning. It is best used for in-class material where students can have individualized learning assistance.

Technical Requirements:

Browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome; Adobe Reader, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint.

Excel Add-in: Please see https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred-addin/

Excellent understanding of excel, specifically the ability to develop macros within excel using Visual Basic for Application (VBA) language.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Students will learn to play around with relevant data from the FRED website to create different scenarios for their charts and presentation.
Students will quickly review all of the microeconomic concepts (e.g. land – real estate market and capital).
Students will understand the interrelationship as well as nuances in extracting information from the real estate world.

Target Student Population:

Intermediate Microeconomics, Advanced Microeconomics, Econometrics
Non-economics or Non-business students taking an Economics and/or Business course as a minor but interested in understanding the effect of FRED data on real estate private equity funds market.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

Advanced understanding of excel, specifically the ability to develop macros within excel using Visual Basic for Application (VBA) language.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

The concept of having learning material to assist in the download of large databases is good.
The quality of the development tool provided is clear and comprehensive.
It is easy to read the material and understand the different parts of the building blocks for a given concept.
The caveat is to have some economics, real estate and mathematical background to appreciate fully the explanations.

Concerns:

I have concerns about the complexity of the process. It may need additional guidance to assist in the overall usage.
Perhaps, providing a visual through the use of JING or simply taking a video to show the steps could make the tool easier to understand.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The learning goals are easy to identify in this material.
The material is a good example to support this type of content for learning.
The very specific and clear instructions minimize the intimidation of extracting and using real-time data from the FRED.

Concerns:

I have concerns that there are some details to the steps missing.
Additional detail will assist in increasing this as a teaching tool.
Some students, relatively weak in Math/graphing, might feel overwhelmed with the computation. Thus, working in groups or pairing up a strong-math/graphing student with a relatively weak-math/graphing student will enhance the learning.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The development tool is clean and neatly presented to understand the rationale behind the tool and offers the opportunity to create a presentation applicable to a real live audience like investors.
If the user has a high-level ability to write and understand excel programming as it relates to VBA, the content is very useful.

Concerns:

I have some concerns about the ease of use of this material at the general education level.
This content appears to be focused on the ability to write and understand excel programming as it relates to VBA. I'd recommend the previous requirements be further vetted on the information page to include this information.
No examples of the final presentation slides are uploaded on this site to provide a preview of how the raw data from FRED is used in the final presentation to the investors. A few examples could make the site more useful.

Other Issues and Comments:

I'd recommend the prerequisites be further identified to include advanced ability to write programming in excel as it relates to VBA.
I'd also recommend a further description for the primary audience as it relates to excel programming.

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