Real Estate

Site analysis is about researching the area around a real estate site. It is gathering consumer demographics, business statistics, and traffic counts within a set geographic area.

When doing site analysis you want to consider where things are today and how they may change in the future. The resources to help with this analysis are backwards looking. To be forward looking you may want to reach out to local government planning offices to understand if there are major building projects or infrastructure projects that may impact the real estate site in the future.

Types of site information you may be looking for:

Traffic Counts: Use the Indiana Department of Transportation's website, including their Traffic Counts Database System
Business & Consumer Demographics: BizMiner and PolicyMap
Business Competitors: BizMiner and Reference Solutions (formerly ReferenceUSA)
B2B Customers: BizMiner and Reference Solutions
B2C Customers: Reference Solutions, Mintel, and Marketresearch.com Academic

As part of site analysis you may need to determine a sales forecast of a business if they build on the site. The Marketing guide may be helpful, specifically the databases IBISWorld, Mintel, Marketresearch.com Academic and Statista. 

You can set radii around a set address (e.g. 1,3,5 miles, or 5, 10, 20 miles, etc) within these databases to find consumer demographics and business statistics.

Tips on how to use Reference Solutions (Data Axle)

• Check out this tutorial video on how to research businesses and filter by industry type, geographic location, and other attributes.
• Check out this tutorial video on how to conduct consumer research and filter by geography (including at the state, county, and street address level, as well as by radius), lifestyle, and demographics.

Free online apps with limited capabilities you can use to generate drive times. Use these alongside other resources (such as PolicyMap, BizMiner, and Reference Solutions) to analyze your site.

• Smappen
• Travel Time

Tips on how to use PolicyMap

• Check out PolicyMap's how-to guides, including their set of brief tutorial videos.
• At the top of the map, there are a number of categories. You may want to start by browsing the topics under "Housing" for residential real estate projects and browsing "Business Vacancy" under "Economy" for commercial real estate projects.

Don't forget to check out the Government Resources tab of this LibGuide to find more sources of data! Two good bets are STATS Indiana and StatsAmerica.