Scoring Disclaimer
Hype Score™ is a proprietary signal. This page explains what it is, what it isn't, and how to read it without overweighting any single number.
1. What Hype Score™ is
Hype Score™ is HypeCity's proprietary 0-100 signal that combines five quantitative factors per neighborhood into a single comparable number. It's designed to help investors triage thousands of neighborhoods quickly, surface ones worth deeper research, and notice when a tracked neighborhood moves materially.
The score is computed nightly by the v3 SQL formula, written to the hype_snapshots table once per day at 02:00 UTC, and exposed to the product on the Leaderboard, the Analyzer, the Tycoon market, and the Market Pulse hub.
2. What Hype Score™ is not
- Not investment advice. A Hype Score™ of 78 doesn't mean "buy". It means our model rates this neighborhood favorably across the five factors below, given the data we have.
- Not a guarantee. Real-estate outcomes depend on many things outside our dataset — your specific deal terms, financing, taxes, holding period, regulatory changes, exit liquidity.
- Not a real-estate appraisal. Property valuations require a licensed appraiser inspecting the specific asset. We score neighborhoods, not individual listings.
- Not a brokerage service. HypeCity does not buy, sell, list, or arrange transactions in real property.
- Not legal, tax, or regulatory advice. Cross-border investing has jurisdiction-specific rules. We don't substitute for a local lawyer or accountant.
3. Five factors behind the score
Each neighborhood gets evaluated against five quantitative inputs, blended into the composite Hype Score™. The exact weights are part of our proprietary model and change as we recalibrate against outcomes.
- Investment yield — long-term rental yield (LTR) relative to local market norms.
- Price growth — historical and forecast appreciation of $/m².
- Geopolitical stability — national-level political-risk indicators.
- Climate & environmental risk — modeled exposure to flood, fire, heat, and similar hazards.
- Listing-market signal — listing velocity, days-on-market, price-reduction frequency (US-only where available).
[TODO: founder review] Confirm we're comfortable publishing the names of the five inputs at this level of detail before launch. We never publish weights or the exact formula.
4. Signal coverage disclosure
Not every neighborhood has data for every factor. We track per-row source completeness on a 0-1 scale (1 = all five inputs populated, 0 = none) and surface it on the product as a "x/5 signals filled" chip on every Hype Score™ display.
The Market Pulse "Recent movement" card filters strictly: a neighborhood only appears once both the current and the prior snapshot clear a 0.6 source-completeness threshold. A score with low signal coverage may be useful for comparison within a country, but is less reliable as a cross-country comparison.
If a chip shows 2/5 signals, treat the score as directional, not precise.
5. Updates & freshness
Hype Snapshots refresh once daily at 02:00 UTC. The Pulse delta on /market-pulse shows the change between today's snapshot and the closest snapshot from ~24 hours prior. Real-time alerts and intraday changes are not part of the score.
The AI verdict on /analyze is generated fresh per submission using a current Claude model and the daily snapshot — it is not cached beyond the listing-hash dedup window.
6. How to read a Hype Score™ responsibly
- Use it to narrow, not to decide. A score in the 70s-80s flags a neighborhood worth deeper diligence; it doesn't replace that diligence.
- Compare scores within a country or region before comparing across regions. National-level factors (geopolitical stability, currency) dominate the cross-country variance.
- Look at the signal-coverage chip. A score with 5/5 signals carries more confidence than a score with 2/5.
- Watch the Pulse delta. A 5+ point move overnight on a neighborhood with high signal coverage usually means a meaningful real-world data point changed.
- When in doubt, cross-reference primary sources — local listing portals, recorded sales, on-the-ground brokers.
7. Trademark & methodology
Hype Score™ is a trademark of HypeCity Intelligence Ltd. The methodology, weights, and underlying SQL are confidential and proprietary. We don't publish the formula; we do publish what it measures.