Webster Pacific

18Feb

February 18, 2019: WHERE IS CHICAGOLAND’S BIGGEST GROWTH IN HIGH-EARNING HOUSEHOLDS?

Written by Chicago Agent Magazine’s Scott Klocksin. Published on Chicago Agent Mag on February 18, 2019.

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One of the things that drives real estate is the search for the next booming neighborhood. While there’s no easy way to know for sure where the next popular spot will be, sometimes the answer lies hidden in plain sight — in a spreadsheet.

With the help of data supplied by consulting firm Webster Pacific, we crunched the numbers on over 3,000 census tracts in Illinois and found the 10 in the Chicagoland area that saw the largest numerical increase in households with incomes of $200,000 or more (in 2017 dollars) between the year 2000 and 2017 — which is the most recent year with available data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

If you build it, they will come

As it happens, the tracts are evenly split at five apiece between the city and suburbs. One thing that nearly all of the census tracts that made the cut have in common is significant amounts of new development in the past two decades and a corresponding spike in total population. This was true in the city as well as the suburbs. In the South Loop, for example, Census Tract 3301 (No. 1 on our list for gains in households making $200,000 or more) saw a 279 percent jump in its number of total households from 2000 to 2017. More than 40 miles away, Census Tract 8545.01 — which covers parts of Geneva, most of Elburn and rural areas between the two towns — logged a 143 percent gain in household count from 2000 to 2017. That Kane County census tract ranks 9th on our list of tracts that saw the most growth in high-earning households.

*You can read the rest of the article on Chicago Agent Magazine, via this link.

18Dec

December 18, 2018: Americans Earning Over $200,000 Are Flocking to These Neighborhoods

by Steve BazantArticleLeave a comment

Written by Bloomberg’s Reade Pickert, Jonathan Levin, and Hannah Recht. Published on Bloomberg on December 18th, 2018.

U.S. unemployment is near a 50-year low, economic growth is brisk and the stock market—despite a disappointing 2018—has paid generous returns since the financial crisis of a decade ago.

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But not for everyone. The chasm between rich and poor hasn’t been this wide since data collection began in the 1960s. Workers experience starkly different versions of America depending on which city or neighborhood they live in. One way to measure the economic fortunes of a place is by the concentration of households earning $200,000 or more, the highest threshold in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Nationally, 6.9 percent of American households bring in that much. What follows are the areas (known to the Census Bureau as tracts) that have shown the biggest increases in concentration of $200,000-and-up households since 2000, according to calculations by consulting firm Webster Pacific. It used data released on Dec. 6 and adjusted for inflation. (The ranking excludes recently created tracts, those defined as tracts of significant change and any tract with fewer than 100 households in either 2000 or 2017.)

*You can read the rest of the article on Bloomberg, via this link.

15Dec

December 15, 2018: Where do the richest people in Dubai live?

by Steve BazantArticleLeave a comment

Written by Khaleej Times’ Waheed Abbas. Published on Khaleej Times on December 15th, 2018.

Dubai is synonymous with the cities of the rich as the glamorous city is home to the highest number of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) in the region.

According to New World Wealth, there are approximately over 55,000 HNWIs with $1 million-plus assets, 2,590 multi-millionaires with $10-million assets and 10 billionaires who have made the emirate as their home. But where do most of these millionaires live in the emirate?

An analysis by the US-based Webster Pacific showed that the Jumeirah, Umm Suqeim and surrounding areas have the highest concentration of HNWIs, followed by the Al Karama, Al Raffa and Al Barsha areas.

*You can read the rest of the article on Khaleej Times, via this link.

16Nov

November 16, 2018: Here are the priciest real estate markets in the world

by Steve BazantArticleLeave a comment

Written by Inman News’ Gabriela Barkho. Published on Inman on November 16th, 2018.

This month, consulting firm Webster Pacific partnered with New World Wealth, a market research firm that focuses on wealth data, to release the top property indexes of where the priciest real estate markets are in the U.S. and internationally.

The firms tracked a few key apartments in major cities in prime, upscale neighborhoods. Here are the “Top 10 US cities/towns ranked by the dollar rate per square meter,” collected in June 2018:

New York City : $34,000
Pebble Beach, Monterey: $21,000
Los Angeles: $14,000

*You can read the rest of the article on Inman News, via this link.

31Oct

OCTOBER 31, 2019: NW GIS CONFERENCE – COMBINING DISPARATE DATASETS TO GET THE DATA YOU NEED

by Steve BazantEventsLeave a comment

Steve presented at the NorthWest GIS User Conference on the topic of combining disparate datasets in Bremerton, WA on October 31, 2018.

Abstract: Do you ever struggle to find the exact GIS data that you want? Do you get frustrated that available datasets aren’t granular enough or are redacted in a way that isn’t actionable? We live in the Big Data revolution, so why should we give up if we don’t find the exact GIS data that we are looking for? In this session, we will explore the idea that to get the GIS data you want, one dataset, you may need to employ and combine multiple datasets. To demonstrate this, we have a case study on enhancing international wealth and demographic data, although this approach can apply to any GIS dataset and to any GIS industry.

*You can read the rest of the abstract, here.

18Apr

April 18, 2018: So You Want To Be A Data Analyst?

by Tom PaperArticleLeave a comment

Written by Webster Pacific Managing Partner Tom Paper. Published on Medium on April 18th, 2018.

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I’ve hired and employed over 25 recent college grads since I graduated from Stanford Business School in 1990. The consulting practice, Webster Pacific, that my partner and I lead does strategy work that is highly data-intensive. We crunch massive amounts of data to answer our clients’ questions, many of which are in the K-12 private school business. The questions we answer include: Where should we open a new school? Where is the wealth in a market? Why are families leaving our school? How far do applicants typically live from our school? Why are teachers loyal to our school? To answer these questions, we analyze data…mountains of data. We currently employ six data analysts.

So here’s my advice to all recent grads interested in becoming a data analyst:

19Mar

March 19, 2018: US Data is Easy. International Data is Hard.

by Tom PaperArticleLeave a comment

Written by Webster Pacific Managing Partner Tom Paper. Published on Medium on March 19th, 2018.

Getting US data is easy. Getting international data is hard. For many reasons, US data about demographics and wealth is easy to find, even on a micro-geographic basis, but in virtually every other country in the world, finding data about demographics and wealth is very hard.

09Mar

March 7-9, 2018: NAIS Conference, Mission-driven data visualization- Compelling dashboards that transform student learning in real time

by Daniel SaniskiEvents

Conference Workshop Presented by Webster Pacific Consultant Daniel Saniski

Many schools possess extensive data, but struggle to produce insights that fuel student success. At Avenues: The World School, we have codified our goals by defining the essential skills of a graduate, and use a wide variety of data to measure these goals in a systematic fashion. Our dashboarding system, co-created with Webster Pacific, is used to report student performance and growth against these goals in real time, allowing us to visually measure success across many years, answer important research questions, and communicate effectively with diverse audiences. In this session, we’ll show how we use data visualization to create actionable insights from our data.

23Oct

October 23, 2017: Market Selection Analytics – Choosing a National Strategy

by Steve BazantArticle

Written by Webster Pacific Consultant Steve Bazant. Published by Propmodo on October 23rd, 2017.

Recently, I was sitting down with a contact who works at a premier commercial real estate (CRE) investment company with a nation-wide portfolio. We were discussing his national portfolio and the types of markets in which the company usually invests. At one point during our conversation, he said something that struck me: “Our current strategy is to only invest in sunbelt markets.” His reasoning here was that these markets are “up and coming”. I knew that this contact had huge success in the world of CRE, but I found myself thinking, what does “up and coming” even mean? How do you prove that? How could a national investment strategy be the southern half of the entire country?

23May

May 23, 2017: Using Data-Driven Location Analytics to Guide Commercial Real Estate Investments

by Steve BazantArticle

Written by Webster Pacific Consultant Steve Bazant. Published by Propmodo on May 23rd, 2017.

My father, a seasoned commercial real estate broker, always told me that real estate is about “location, location, location.” While working in his office as teenager, I can remember hearing brokers arguing loudly about which neighborhoods were up and coming, what the residents were like, and where the most money could be made. After working in the consulting industry for several years, my company, Webster Pacific, has embarked on an analytical journey to better quantify “location, location, location.” To educate our clients, we have taken our own, novel approach to location analytics.

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If you build it, they will come