About POTM

What POTM is, where AI fits, and who is accountable.

What POTM is

POTM stands for Pulse On Today’s Market. POTM Command is the engine behind Market Intel: it pulls San Francisco’s MLS closed-sale records into one consistent dataset that runs back a decade, refreshed each cycle so the figures stay current rather than months old. Every number traces to a specific closed sale, by neighborhood and housing type.

Governed means it runs on fixed rules, not one-off spreadsheets: one source of truth, single-family kept separate from condos and TICs, thin samples flagged, and nothing typed in by hand.

How it works

Each cycle it does the same four things:

1. Pulls closed-sale records from the San Francisco MLS.
2. Cleans and de-duplicates them, so a sale counts once and a closed sale stays closed.
3. Organizes every sale by SFAR subdistrict, property type, and month, a decade deep.
4. Computes the medians and shares you see, sale-to-list, price, days on market, and cash, each carried with its sample size so a thin month reads as directional, not fact.

Where AI fits

Claudio is the team’s agentic analyst, built on Claude AI. Under the team’s direction, Claudio does the heavy lifting: cleaning and reconciling the records, building the maps, charts, and tables, and drafting the first read of what the data shows. The AI makes the work faster and more consistent. It does not decide what is true, and it does not speak for the team.

What Claudio does to build and run Market Intel:

• Builds and maintains the app: the house-market map, every chart, the sparkline tables, and the interactivity.
• Cleans ten years of governed MLS closed sales into one deduplicated dataset, refreshed each cycle.
• Focuses on the single-family home market, read subdistrict by subdistrict. Condos, townhomes, and TICs enter under The market and the all-residential lanes.
• Classifies each subdistrict into a market role from its own decade of behavior.
• Keeps measured facts and field observations apart, and labels which is which.

Where accountability sits

Level Up Group sets the questions, checks every number against its source, and adds the part no dataset carries: what the team is actually seeing in live deals. The line Market Intel keeps between measured (what the sales records prove) and observed (what agents see in the field) is the team’s rule, and observed is never dressed up as measured.

Final judgment, interpretation, and accountability sit with Level Up Group. The AI is a tool; the standard of honesty and the responsibility for every claim are the team’s. If a number here is wrong, it is the team’s to correct.

Methodology

The exact rules every number answers to.

Sources and order of authority

Figures derive from the San Francisco Multiple Listing Service, processed through POTM Command, a governed analytics system that applies automated ingestion, repair, data quality review, deduplication, and reporting readiness gates before any figure is published. Reports are only built when the system’s readiness check passes. Active, pending, and sold hero counts defer to InfoSparks (ShowingTime Plus), the San Francisco Association of Realtors’ statistics platform, when sources disagree.

This update’s data

Closed sales through 2026-07-21. After deduplication this update rests on 62,438 unique closed listings (2002 to present; analysis windows begin 2016). Removals this cycle: 7 sale-to-list outliers (data entry errors above 200% of list) and 4 quarantined events excluded by published data quality review decisions.

Definitions

Windows: compared to what?

• Window cascade: last 7, 30, and 90 days against the rolling 12 months, each shown beside the identical window one year earlier. Short windows are momentum clues; the rolling year is the benchmark.
• Trends: matched January to May windows each year since 2016, so seasonality never distorts the comparison.
• Districts: 2026 year to date against each district’s own January to May peak since 2016. Districts are only compared with themselves; years with fewer than seven sales do not set peaks.
• Year over year always means the same period one year prior, never the immediately preceding period.

Sample size discipline

Every figure carries its sample size or a reliability label drawn from POTM Command’s published thresholds: Strong samples support conclusions; Directional samples are momentum clues only; Anecdotal samples are disclosed but never argued from. Neighborhood cells under 15 closings are excluded from rankings entirely.

Presentation doctrine

Charts and tables follow two standards. From Edward Tufte: no chartjunk, no misleading axes, small multiples for fair comparison, and every visual must map to a decision a buyer or seller actually faces. From Patrick Carlisle’s rules for honest real estate statistics: context first (a number without a comparison is worthless), small sample discipline, medians over means, trends over snapshots, and no forecast theater. If a future update ever breaks one of these rules, this page will say so.

Reliability and revisions

All information is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed. Multiple Listing Service data changes after the fact: late-reported closings arrive, statuses are corrected, and quality review reclassifies records. Figures here are therefore subject to change, correction, and revision between updates, and a number may differ slightly from the same number in an earlier or later update for that reason. No claim is made that any figure is 100% accurate, and no responsibility is assumed for errors or omissions. When a revision materially changes a previously published read, the next update will say so. All data, including all measurements and calculations of area, is obtained from various sources and has not been, and will not be, verified by broker or MLS. All information should be independently reviewed and verified for accuracy.