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Research methodology
A global housing publication that is organized around the United States will misread the world. The method starts with geography, then evidence, then interpretation.
The geographic model is World → continent or global region → country → state, province, or other administrative area → metropolitan area → city. Not every country has U.S.-style states or ZIP codes. Administrative labels are stored per place.
Location pages are published only when there is enough sourced narrative or data to help a reader. The database can contain unpublished places so the tree is ready; the public site should not fill itself with empty URLs.
Important claims should be checked against more than one reliable source, with attention to whether those sources are actually independent. The original dataset is preferred over a news rewrite of the same number.
Incompatible datasets are not compared silently. OECD price-to-income indices can be compared with each other. A UK HPI average in pounds and a U.S. median sales price in dollars require an explicit method before they share a chart.
Related pages: data methodology and editorial standards.