Baron Briefs

Trading of housing “binaries” returned to HedgeStreet today with three additional cities: Las Vegas, Denver and Washington, DC. That brings the total number of cities available for hedging and speculation to ten.

HedgeStreet’s website describes their hedging instruments as a way consumers can “speculate the degree to which their home will appreciate, or conversely, hedge against depreciation in the value of their home”. But I’d be willing to bet (no pun intended) they’d increase trading volume rapidly if they pitched to real estate agents as a way to hedge asking prices. For example, Joe Realtor could suggest a slightly higher asking price for a listing and place a bet against rising prices using HedgeStreet.

In any event, I think HedgeStreet is a cool idea and hope it gains more traction this year whomever the traders may be.