Our guest blogger today is Raphael Bostic, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research

As consumers flock to the shopping malls this holiday season, have you thought about shopping for…data?

I’m a numbers guy. To me, data can tell a story about what’s happening in the real world and that, in turn, can drive our decisions on a whole host of issues. Obviously, this holiday season finds a lot of folks worried about the economy and the housing market. Never before has there been a greater demand for economic and housing data among state and local leaders, businesses, researchers and even students. But now, this kind of data is only a click away!

Today, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) unveiled a new website that consolidates a wide variety of economic and housing market data at the regional, state, metropolitan area and county levels. Using information from the Census Bureau, Labor Department, State and Local governments, housing industry sources, as well as HUD’s own field economists, the new website employs interactive maps that allow visitors easy access a variety of reports – from a region-wide look at employment and housing activity to individual county-level figures on population trends, rental activity and vacancy rates.

This is a powerful new tool that’s easy to use and offers the public a remarkable look at their local economic and housing markets. This is precisely why this site will be so helpful to state and local leaders, developers, the real estate industry, and the general public who need the latest available data on their markets.

To view the reports mentioned above for a each region of the country, or for particular states, metropolitan areas or even counties, visit hud.gov/datamap.