Understanding Your Community
How to Conduct a Real Estate Analysis of Change in Your Market
A responsive, diversity-oriented business plan for your state or local REALTOR® association depends on an accurate analysis of the demographic characteristics of your market. Demography is simply the study of the composition, distribution, movements, and changes within human populations. Is the population growing? What is the ethnic mix? What is the ratio of renters to owners? Is per capita income rising? Demography and market strategy go hand-in-hand.
A demographic analysis for your state or local REALTOR® association would include current patterns within your community, as well as future trends. A change in demographics might signal the need to change your market strategy.
Data that are likely to be the most helpful in understanding your community include national origin, native language, age, race, household income, number of children, marital status, employment rates, and housing tenure. But essentially anything that REALTORS® within your association consider key about an individual sale, for example, travel time to work, might be useful to examine in the aggregate.
Your members may feel they already understand the local market well. If not, resources for learning about community demographics are plentiful and mostly free. Here are ways to answer the most basic questions:
- What Is Happening In My Local Real Estate Market?
- Who Else Analyzes the National Market In Depth?
- What Do I Have to Know About Statistics?
- How Else Can an Association Improve Understanding of the Community?
- What about Underserved Members of the Community?
- Shouldn't Fair Housing Come First?
What Does NAR Have to Offer?
The Research Division of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (NAR) produces the premier measurement of residential real estate activity — existing home sales. It also tracks national as well as regional housing affordability. In addition, NAR Research conducts surveys, including its most popular profile of home buyers and sellers, member profile, and profile of real estate services. Research offers county-level reports, including the Market Intelligence Report and the Relocation Report, to give REALTORS® valuable demographic, housing, and relocation information. Some information is available on the Web and can be downloaded at no charge in PDF format; other reports are available for a nominal fee. To view details, visit the Research Division on the Web at www.realtor.org/Research.
For more information, contact the Division directly by e-mail at eresearch@realtors.org, or by phone at 202/383-7518.
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