There's an old saying that goes "All Real Estate Is Local".

In a nutshell, it means that real estate markets differ from state-to-state and from city-to-city.  But it gets even more granular than that.   Because of school district boundaries and public services, real estate markets are even different from block-to-block.

As an exercise on how this works in real life, look at the six images above.  Then, imagine each to represent a neighborhood near your home.

Note how each block of photos has its own vibe, character and flavor.  Some have dogs, some are yellow, some are hip.  Some are young, some are old, some are blurry.  Each "neighborhood" above is distinct.

Now, look at the photo below.

This photo represents the national real estate market.

If you look closely at the bigger picture, you can see your six neighborhoods mixed in. One's up in the sky, another one's in the grass, another one's in the For Sale sign, and so on.  The picture is comprised of literally thousands of "neighborhoods", each serving as a tile in a national real estate photomosaic.

It's a fitting analogy for how we often get our news on real estate.

Consider business television.  CNBC features stories about "rising home prices" in America and "an increasing number of foreclosures".  What they're really talking about the photomosaic -- not the individual tiles where we all individually live.

For a home buyer, getting that "whole picture" is about as helpful as having Al Roker report that the national temperature to be 77 degrees.

Sure, maybe the national picture matters on some levels, but not nearly as much as the ultra-local one.  We don't live in all 50 states at the same time, after all, and for a person buying a home in Cincinnati, what's happening in the Chicago condo market is mostly irrelevant.

Homes exists in one place and one place only; as a tiny little square on the face of the national real estate market.  And when we say "All Real Estate Is Local", this is what we mean.

Each real estate market has its own characteristics which drive home values, buyer activity, and average days on market.  You can't get that kind of news from TV, either -- you can only get it from a local source.

If you're buying or selling a home and need to be connected to someone that knows the neighborhood inside and out, just . I'd be happy to connect you to people I know and trust.

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Dan Green is an active loan officer. Email or call 513-443-2020. Dan is on Twitter at @mortgagereports.