Real-estate infographics

The Herald has some quite attractive interactive graphics of real-estate prices, but I’m not entirely convinced of their informativeness.  You can see any one of the numbers by pointing at it, but you can’t see two numbers simultaneously, just the binary up/down indicator.

Having a separate category for ‘basically the same’ would help, for example, Christchurch has one red and one green for both median house price and index level, but the increase in median house price is only 0.6% over a year, and the fall since last month is a relatively dramatic 5.7%.  Perhaps the intermediate colour could designate ‘increased less than inflation’, to offset the general resistance to using inflation-adjusted housing prices.

The red and green colours they chose have sufficiently different luminance than they are likely to be distinguishable even if you’re red:green color blind, which is to be commended, but I don’t really like the implication that cheaper housing is bad and more expensive housing is good.  I don’t think the Herald would use red for decreases and green for increases in the price of milk, or petrol, or health care.