Assessing Land Opportunity Using Consumer Data

Recently I watched a news report on Newsy about the Opportunity Atlas. The Opportunity Atlas is “an initial release of social mobility data, the result of a collaboration between researchers at the Census Bureau, Harvard University, and Brown University.” It tries to answer the question: Which neighborhoods in America offer children the best chance to rise out of poverty? The Opportunity Atlas answers this question using anonymous data following 20 million Americans from childhood to their mid-30s.

It’s a fascinating way to view your hometown or where you currently live. You can search on your own by clicking on this link.

For those of us in real estate who are focused on attainability in housing, it offers a great research tool to find areas for infill development where rents are low compared to incomes. In the map below I looked at areas between Chapel Hill and Durham. The bluer colors represent higher income households with the dark orange and red colors representing lower median household incomes. The area outlined in black represents a pocket of real estate where the median income is $58,000 with median rents of $1,200/month.

The tool is free and allows you to search by areas on screen, a selected demographic group or by an average of all in the US.

As land prices continue to rise and competition remains high in the Raleigh/Cary and Durham/Chapel-Hill MSA's, more builders will look to the Triad to help meet their annual business goals. This tool could provide a great starting point for your acquisition teams.

If you need help understanding what markets you should be in for 2020 or in assessing current land opportunities, we'd love to connect with you!