Market Research

Success Favors the Prepared (and Well Researched)
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
01.02.2008
As we enter 2008, I predict that the importance of research and well-informed analysis will only grow. Therefore, the demand for quality research and the analysts capable of producing it should be high. The irony is that not all builders and developers appreciate quality research, or at least many didn’t appreciate it when they had all the easy money they could get. That appears to be changing.

Investors and lenders are now requiring serious research to back development and construction lending. What was fluff that few paid attention to a few years ago has turned into what it should have been all along—serious analysis of the likelihood of success of a planned project as well as the expected price and pace of absorption.
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Demonstrated vs. Estimated Demand
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
12.19.2007
In my last post I described the distinction between estimated demand and demonstrated demand and how strictly looking at demonstrated demand can lead researchers and planners to miss clear opportunities in a market.

There’s nothing quite like a real example to show the difference. So I am sharing with you some research we recently completed in a submarket of Atlanta.
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Defining Demand
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
12.14.2007

On Wednesday I highlighted a recent academic paper on estimating the demand for new homes over the longer term. In the paper, the methods used to estimate demand at a national level are well described as are the data sets behind them.

Would it strike you as odd that most market researchers don’t follow the same type of method of estimating demand for a specific residential development? Well, they don’t. What may have been done initially as the only practical way of measuring feasibility has turned into a paved cowpath touted by many as the only way to measure demand. But before you decide to build a superhighway down that same path, let me tell you about a better way that does live up to the principles espoused in the Harvard paper.
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Estimating Demand for New Homes
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
12.12.2007
The Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University recently published a new report, “Projecting the Underlying Demand for New Housing Units: Inferences from the Past, Assumptions about the Future,” that is a must read for any serious housing market researcher.

The 48 page report is one of the best studies I have seen that provides solid national estimates of expected future demand for new housing. The report also details the methods and data sources used in such a way that market researchers can understand potential limitations of the data used.
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Estimating New Home Supply
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
12.07.2007
I’m excited to announce that we have added a major new information enhancement to the Neighborhood Insights application to provide visibility into estimated new home supply.

As researchers we have been frustrated by the few and inconsistent methods to measure supply in markets. We also wanted a way to analyze supply down to census tracts or zip codes and by price point. The new enhancement does exactly that.
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