Methodology
How Real Record builds its data
Every chart, table, and investigation on Real Record is grounded in public records — pulled directly from government sources, parsed by code, and refreshed on a documented schedule. This page tells you exactly where the data comes from, how it's transformed, what the known limitations are, and how to cite it.
On this page
Data sources
Real Record pulls from primary government records — Assessor exports, Treasurer reports, council minutes, budget books, and state agency datasets. Every source is documented below with its refresh cadence and owner.
| Dataset | Source | Refresh | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parcel tax-owner history | Whatcom County Assessor annual MDB exports | Annual | 2005–present |
| Tax book line items | Whatcom Assessor Annual Tax Books | Annual | 2001–present |
| Cash balances + debt | Whatcom Treasurer quarterly PDFs | Quarterly (auto-refresh) | 2010–present |
| City budgets (Bellingham) | City of Bellingham annual budget books | Annual | 2018–present |
| Population estimates | WA Office of Financial Management | Annual (April 1) | 1990–present |
| Meeting briefings | City council / committee recordings + minutes | Per-meeting | Varies by jurisdiction |
Pipeline
Raw documents flow through a four-stage pipeline:
- Ingest — PDFs are downloaded and OCR'd; MDB files are parsed with
mdbtools; APIs are polled. - Parse — structured data extracted, validated against schema, written to Azure SQL.
- Aggregate — per-fund, per-parcel, per-jurisdiction rollups computed.
- Publish — HubDB tables refreshed, page templates render the data, CC BY 4.0.
Refresh cadence
Each dataset has a documented refresh schedule. If you see data that looks stale, file a feedback report — the source may have updated and our refresh pipeline missed it.
Known limitations
- Acreage coverage 2005–2008: parcel
total_accoverage in the Whatcom Assessor MDBs goes from 51% (2005) to 79% (2025) with a step change between 2008 and 2009. For acreage trend analysis, use 2009 onward as the baseline. - Owner-name disclosure: only tax-exempt entity owners (city, county, state, school district, nonprofit) are published by name. Private/for-profit owners are redacted to protect personal privacy.
- Meeting transcripts: produced via Azure Speech-to-Text; accuracy depends on recording quality. Marked with confidence intervals when available.
License & citation
All Real Record data is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You may reuse, remix, and republish with credit:
Data: Real Record / Real Housing Reform Initiative (realrecord.org), CC BY 4.0. Underlying sources: Whatcom County Assessor + Treasurer, WA OFM, City of Bellingham.
Contact & feedback
Found an error? Disagree with a methodology choice? Have a dataset we should add? Use the Report an Issue form, or email brian@realhousingreform.org directly. Every submission is reviewed personally.