Guides

Ryszard Cieplechowicz: guides

All guides and studies on this site.

Data

The housing work on this site is three reproducible tables built from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey 2020-2024 five-year release, covering 132 selected ZIP Code Tabulation Areas in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties.

• Tampa Bay data hub: overview of the three studies, the area selection, headline county numbers and where to download everything.
• Rent burden study: share of renter households paying at least 30% or 50% of income on gross rent, per study area.
• Home values study: median owner-occupied value and four value bands per study area.
• Vacancy study: vacancy rate and composition by Census vacancy type per study area.
• Datasets and downloads: the CSV files for all three studies in one place, with the Kaggle datasets and Zenodo DOI records.
• How to cite: citation formats and the DOIs to use when referencing the tables.

Method and definitions

Short references that explain exactly how the tables are built, so the numbers can be checked rather than trusted. They cover the survey release, the geography, the thresholds and the sampling rules used on every data page.

• Reading ACS estimates: notes for anyone loading small-area Census data for the first time - margins of error, five-year pooling and why thin samples get dropped.
• ZCTA versus ZIP code: why the Census geography is not the postal code, and what that means when comparing places.
• What rent burdened means: the exact 30% and 50% income thresholds the rent burden study uses.
• Seasonal versus for-rent vacancy: why "vacant" in the survey is not the same as "available to rent."
• Selection of the 132 ZCTAs: how the study areas were chosen and why only 124 carry published estimates.

Office records

Practical recordkeeping notes from over 17 years in property administration. Each is a single habit or method that keeps an office's records usable for the next person.

• Call log notes: how to keep a call log that still makes sense months later.
• Promised versus posted payments: three states an office easily mixes up - promised, received and posted - and how to keep them straight.
• Recovering a dropped task: a short sequence for getting a stalled task moving again when the owner is unclear.
• One-line handoff: the recordkeeping method this site is named for, making a handoff legible to the next person in one sentence.

About the author

Ryszard Cieplechowicz has worked in property administration for over 17 years in the Tampa Bay area. The data studies and the recordkeeping notes come from the same habit he keeps in the office: write the number or the task down plainly enough that someone else can check it or pick it up. More about the work is on the work and writing page.