Is population growth the best way to quickly evaluate a city a property is located in?
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[{"id": "fpgtvig", "text": "I'm no expert but it sounds like you're definitely on the right track. Pop growth and diversified industry are top choices.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fpgu2nv", "text": "Look at job growth too", "replies": [{"id": "fph88m0", "text": "I have always heard this and I love it as a solid indicator, but I am not sure who has the most current numbers. The census is years old. Any sources that you can recommend??", "replies": [{"id": "fphkkwm", "text": "Bureau of labor statistics has monthly data at the metro level.", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fpgvezc", "text": "Growth, diversified employer types, and museum count.", "replies": [{"id": "fpgxvj9", "text": "Whoa, museum count? Can you explain?", "replies": [{"id": "fpgyeiv", "text": "Museums are the last thing to be funded.  Culture relates to community.  Community relates to desirability and pride in ownership.  Not everything is dollars, cents, and hockey stick charts.  All things being equal, I would always choose the city with more culture.  If *you* don't want to live or work there, why would anyone else?", "replies": [{"id": "fpgyo6a", "text": "Interesting take. Thanks.", "replies": [], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}, {"id": "fpi1pa7", "text": "Wow, this is AWESOME as an evaluation metric, esp. for far off markets.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fpgx1b4", "text": "How would one find the diversified employer/ industry types? Just a google search?", "replies": [{"id": "fpj4hec", "text": "Bls.gov would be my 1st place to start", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fpgy2qt", "text": "Hey OP great question.  I use this website called city-data, but I\u2019m curious if you or anyone else knows of any other resources to find out about population growth and other population metrics.", "replies": [{"id": "fpj069m", "text": "I\u2019m a big fan of [datausa.io](https://datausa.io/). You can search any city, county, or state and they have plenty of other useful info both free and paid I believe.", "replies": [{"id": "fpjxjn9", "text": "Thank you!", "replies": [], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fphe3dl", "text": "Median Household Income within a 1,3, and 5 mile radius", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fphh5v7", "text": "Check out housing data too (rental prices going up or down etc.) and overall construction in the area.", "replies": [{"id": "fpi1alt", "text": "Thanks - do you have good data source recommendations?", "replies": [{"id": "fpj4o15", "text": "Zillow - free (just Google Zillow &amp; data)\n\nYardi and RealPage (paid) \n\nGoogle - free but more digging and potentially unreliable\n\nRedfin (housing not rent) pain to analyze but export to Excel available\n\nCase Schiller home price index and other academic published sources", "replies": [], "depth": 3}, {"id": "fpm45rv", "text": "here's one good source to keep an eye on \nhttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?rid=463&amp;eid=1189097", "replies": [{"id": "fq128e2", "text": "Thanks I like this a lot!", "replies": [], "depth": 4}], "depth": 3}], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fphpdxs", "text": "Wouldn't this vary a lot by property type? For strip retail you might want to look at median income and neighborhood demographics within a few miles of the property. City-wide demographic numbers might not be that helpful. If you are buying a retail centre in the NE but most of the population growth has been in the deep SW, you might get misled by the raw numbers\n\nIf it's a suburban or downtown office you might be more interested in YoY growth rate in business licenses issued by the municipality. How much new office construction has gone on in the past few years, what the absorption rate of new office space is.", "replies": [{"id": "fpi1j7p", "text": "Thanks - this is smart and helpful for me to develop my criteria. You're totally right that 1,3,5 mile radius should take focus. One other q: how do you find data for some of the things you mentioned, like office construction cost, absorption rate, licenses. Is that easily searchable public data or something I have to get through city records.", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fpi577i", "text": "Not sure if you\u2019re looking at fast food NNN investments, but I helped appraise a portfolio of fast food restaurants across the Southeast US and many across Florida. Gross sales revenue to overall rent is pretty important to show the health of the business and the longevity of the tenants. Rental increases hedge against inflation. Positive population trends is another plus. A combination of all of these things in a positive way would result in a lower cap rate and higher value... message me if you have any questions.", "replies": [{"id": "fpibw5n", "text": "thanks! Not loooking at QSR rn but I didn't know that metric. What's typical in your line? And do they all report GSR?", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fpi6kaz", "text": "In addition to Demos (which can lead you down a bad rabbit hole) look at surrounding businesses and \"who are their customers\".  My first go-to is the quality of the underlying RE, then I focus heavily on the Rent to Sales Ratio of the tenant.  Understanding the clientele of surrounding tenants can help you know who you can backfill the space with if you loose your tenant.", "replies": [{"id": "fpic273", "text": "I'm looking at an industrial center that is a delivery hub for a local app delivery service. Neighborhood is nice, clean, lots of mom and pop shops but nothing that similar to this property. I don't think I can get GSR to get the rent to sales ratio but I will ask!", "replies": [], "depth": 2}], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fpj48dc", "text": "Rent and cap rate comps in property's local market\n\nRent and cap rate comps in like markets \n\nFind explination for differences\n\nRun demographics on locations\nI.e. population size, growth, age statistics, median income, avg property rent vs home price, avg company size, largest employers (top 5), look at city/county/state budgets size and gdp per capita, unemployment and jobless claims, nearest college and top employment sectors etc.\n\nFind out about deals in the market, are institutions buying/owning? If not, why not? If yes, why?\n\nWhat's your investment thesis, why do you like these properties, why do you like these tenants, why do you like these markets. Answer those questions and then do everything you can to tear it apart. Beat the hell out of your deal and see if it still makes sense.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fq1cgx6", "text": "That is a good start. Try bestplaces.net for population growth and city-data.com for crime. \n\n[about us ](https://youtu.be/_BH5yDfaUxw)", "replies": [], "depth": 1}, {"id": "fr3eshs", "text": "Market analysis is much more than looking at a few metrics. Theres a laundry list of things to do, not to do, along with when, where, why, what, etc. \n\nTo really answer this question, the question needs to be more specific and catered to a specific property type because its going to vary across the asset types. If you're strictly just wanting to evaluate cities based on their population growth or decline alone, I'd say you're destined to have bad results. You say you're evaluating NNN properties but are they retail/industrial? The things you look for to evaluate each of these product types in the same city are going to be much different.", "replies": [], "depth": 1}]