Monday, November 30, 2015

Texas is Growing...Where?

Looking at the current real estate market, the next big emerging cities with a current population under 150,000 could be almost anywhere. The correct way to get a proper estimate in order to analyze the market would be to calculate and understand cap rates, basic jobs versus nonbasic jobs, location quotients, and future population growth among other things.

If we want to find a growing city, we need to identify the basic jobs because those are fundamental to its growth. Basic jobs will provide income to the community from outside sources rather than a nonbasic jobs which will facilitate an internal revenue stream from existing dollars. To put it simply, you do not want to have money recycling in your city, rather have money coming in from elsewhere and drawing people in.

Location quotients will help us identify these basic jobs. When conducting this analysis you want to identify a location quotient greater than 1. Numbers that are greater than 1 mean that it is a basic job and that it is bringing external dollars into the market. This also means that when we comare the national to local employment in a specific industry its influence on that city or market and it's future population growth will be evident.  

Also, understanding cap rates and their effect on the current marketplace is important. The higher the cap rate the lower the prices and the lower the cap rate the higher the prices. Understanding why this would occur and how this could help a cities growth is imperative. 

We need to look at the city and say: what is going on currently and how is it changing? The more we know the more accurate our assumptions will be. 

I believe that the next big city in Texas will be Conroe in Montgomery County. This city lies due north of Houston and the Woodlands. The basic industries in this area are: mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction, construction, retail trade, accommodation and food services and finally other services, except public administration. These are the industries that bring new money into the economy and stimulate it. 

The static economic base multiplier is 1.39. The dynamic economic base multiplier is 20.48. Given the current employment of 127,042 in Montgomery county, the future forecasted increase in total employment will be 61,444. The forecasted total population increase is 241,408. 

As you can see, this area is on the rise and will continue to grow. The ability to calculate and predict these changes in the economy are key to real estate and the industry as a whole. 

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