The biggest determinant to what a property will sell for is what is going on around it: how much supply of nearby property is available, whether there are lots of people with well-paying jobs nearby, whether companies or people are migrating to the area; these and other types of local economic factors. As the saying goes, “location, location, location”.
This type of understanding of how real estate markets are influenced by their local surroundings is intuitive. But in this activity, I’d like you to see if you can tie actual data about a market area to strengthen or better inform what you might already know intuitively.
Therefore, in a post, please do and describe the following:
Pick a city. You can pick San Francisco, or you can pick another city that you feel more closely tied to. Or you can pick a city you’d like to someday move to.
What is this city’s economic base? Is there more than one? What do you think is its highest multiplier activity? Justify your three answers by doing research at the following locations:
You can check out county level business patterns at the US Census: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/data.htmlLinks to an external site.
You can also find employment by county at the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/Links to an external site.
And you can use Census Quickfacts to glean other information, like the percentage of households with a bachelor’s degree or higher, or the percentage of the workforce in government: http://www.census.gov/quickfactsLinks to an external site.
You can also use The University of Indiana’s database, which uses data from the census as well as other sources: https://www.statsamerica.org/Links to an external site.
3. Is your city subject to single-industry risk? If so, if you sit on the city board or supervisors or are some other city official empowered to act, what do you think some sensible solutions to that? Put differently, without detracting from the success of that single-industry, how do you expand the local economic pie?
Hint: Check the section in the textbook: “Resources of a City: The Supply Side of Urban Growth” for some ideas to help you answer that.
