The Herengracht house index
One of my favourite pieces of academic research is a study of house prices along the Herengracht canal in Amsterdam made by real estate finance professor Piet Eichholz of Maastricht University. Thanks to outstanding dutch record-keeping, Eichholz managed to construct the Herengracht house index covering house prices from the contruction of the Herengracht in the 1620s all the way to 1975 at first, and later extended to 2008.
Hotel Ivory 