What is the Alpha Score?

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The Alpha Score is a composite 0–100 index that measures a real estate market's overall strength. It blends up to five dimensions — price momentum, inventory health, affordability, economic strength, and rental yield — into one number, leaving out any dimension we cannot measure for that market and re-scaling the rest, so you can compare markets at a glance and surface emerging areas before they become obvious.

LocalAlpha publishes an Alpha Score from 0 to 100 for metros, counties and ZIP codes. City pages show market data but no score, because too little public data reaches city level. A higher score means stronger overall market conditions for that level.

Scores are computed nightly only from public data (the U.S. Census, BLS, QCEW, FHFA and FRED), then percentile-ranked within the same geography level so a ZIP is compared against other ZIPs, not against a whole metro. Redfin and Zillow figures appear on market pages for context and do not feed the score.

What is the Alpha Score?

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