Real-estate expert Orr joins ASU as analyst

Arizona State University has a new real-estate analyst, but he's no newcomer to metro Phoenix's housing market. Mike Orr, publisher of the "Cromford Report," a daily online real-estate market analysis for metro Phoenix, has joined the W.P. Carey School of Business. Orr, an Oxford University-educated mathematician from England, will provide real-estate analysis for the university and continue his own real-estate report. His new ASU title is director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice. Jay Butler, ASU's longtime real-estate analyst, retired last summer. Orr moved to metro Phoenix from Silicon Valley during the housing boom after a 30-year career in technology. He immediately started looking for ways to track more specific indicators for the housing market, including pending sales, to help him with his own real-estate deals. In 2008, Orr met longtime Phoenix data guru Tom Ruff of the Information Market. "It was like finding a long-lost brother," Ruff said. "We were both intensely interested in figuring out the best way to track Phoenix's real-estate data. His models to analyze data from the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service were almost the same I was using to track public real- estate records. We are both data geeks."

Click here to view this article from its source.