Brodie Gay | Source | VP, Data Science at Unison

Historically, cities with high concentrations of jobs in resilient industrial sectors experience the quickest recovery in housing prices.

Not only does this asset class provide institutional investors a way to diversify their assets, it also gives homeowners nationwide ways to tap into their home equity for important and often very critical needs.

Diversification is the core principle of modern portfolio theory. We spend a lot of time and diligence on portfolio allocations spanning equities, fixed income securities, and alternative investments, but for a typical household, home equity is typically 60% of the total financial portfolio. We believe homes have been left out of financial planning - even though for American homeowners the house is the bulk of their net worth - because we didn't have a good way to measure risk for this asset. That's why we set out to build this index.