I’m a newcomer to real estate investing. I’m 22 years old and I want to get started by learning from the educated community on how to research where emerging hot areas will occur. I understand real estate agents will have an inside hand possibly. I guess there are many variables to look at such as hospital development, malls, jobs around the area for blue or white collars, etc. I was hoping to find some good resources to tap into so that I may get started. I realize this might be a held secret for many people because after all, if everyone knew about how to find the hot areas, then it be disastrous (in my eyes). If you do not feel like sharing publicly, I completely understand. Nevertheless, I am all ears and eyes for a private message. Anywho, thanks for reading this and I hope to hear from some of you soon. ;D
Some key points you will want to look at in this research is:
Job growth
Population growth
Residential building permits
Looking at market area growth direction
Looking at average rent growth
School district data
Crime rate data
You will find that http://money.cnn.com/ to be a great source of information on most of the above info.
This is just a starting point! Good luck on your search!
The Census can be good but don’t consider it to be entirely accurate. I tend to think they plot 2 points on their line graphs and continue the line out for 10 years and call it a projection. They don’t factor in a lot of key macro and micro components such as: