Financial Functions, Data Tables, and Amortization Schedules
This Assignment has 3 parts as outlined below:
  • PART ONE: In this assignment you will determine if the average home price in your community is affordable for the average resident of your community. To do this we will need to look up some basic information.
    Use Google to find the following information about your county:
    • Median value of owner occupied housing units for your county
    • Median Household Income for your county
    For example for Sonoma County I can find this here: Census data for Sonoma County

    Use this information to create a dynamic spreadsheet that will allow you to change any of the criteria we use as a guide to come up with an indication about the state of your community.

    Critera
    • The buyer will have at least 10% of the value of the home to invest in the purchase of a new home.
    • The payroll tax rate has an average of 33% in your community (Note: you could research this and put the actual number)
    • The buyer cannot have a house payment that is more that 33% of their gross income, (otherwise a financial institution will not finance the remainder).
    All of your calculation data should be changeable by the user (without changing a formula). Your presentation should make it easy to see what goes where. You should also make an attempt to indicate which cells should be changed and which should not (perhaps by using background shading).


  • PART TWO: Prove that the information for your county holds for your community (or if it does not).

    Use an on-line real estate web site like Zillow or realtor.com to find the 5 houses for sale closest to your house (or an area you are interested in). Create a table of data in your spreadsheet that lists each of these houses with what you consider to be the 5 most important attributes of a house (for example: bedrooms, bathrooms, living area, lot size, etc.)

    Use averages of your 5 sample houses to create a median price for your target house.

    Change your data from a data range to a data table. Examine the formulas in your spreadsheet, notice any changes.

    Specify a weight for each of your 5 items on a 1-10 Likert scale with a 10 being very important and a 1 being only a little important. Set up your spreadsheet so the weights can be changed and there is a column that indicates the result of the weights of the attributes.

    What happened when you added the new data to the table?


  • PART THREE: Set up a goal seek to determine what the interest rate must be to allow the average resident to purchase a home in your county.
Submit your files as an attachment in an email Use "Lab Assignment 5 " for the Subject line and remember to identify yourself by name and class in the email body.
Return to Assignments Index