Economic and demographic indicators

EQUIRE reads metro-level economic and demographic indicators from federal statistical agencies and research publishers. Availability varies by metric and metro. Use each result's observation date and coverage hints when comparing markets.

Categories and publishers

The categories and publishers below are representative. The live definition tool returns the current metric keys and publisher metadata; each market read also returns per-row availability and observation-date information.

Every metric carries its own unit, polarity, vintage, and definition. Ask the assistant for getMetricDefinitions to read the live definition of any one of them, rather than relying on a table that can drift.

National macro context

Separately from the metro layer, EQUIRE carries seven national series sourced from FRED, each on its own publication cadence and running from 2016: the 2-year and 10-year Treasury daily, the 30-year mortgage rate weekly, CPI, the federal funds rate and total nonfarm payrolls monthly, and real GDP quarterly. EQUIRE reads them from the data producer's mirror of those series rather than calling FRED at request time. These supply rate context and the spread comparisons on the Property-type market tab of Market research.

Metrics that are computed, not observed

Some metrics are derived by the data producer from other registry values rather than observed, including sector and composite scores, paired confidence fields, and a composite rank. They are useful for ranking and triage, not as observations, and two properties of the scores are commonly misread.

Confidence fields measure coverage, not strength

Each sector score ships a paired _confidence value. That value is the share of the recipe's weighted inputs that actually had data. A low confidence means the score was computed from a partial recipe. It does not mean the market is weak.

The multifamily opportunity score substitutes a neutral value

mf_opportunity blends two sub-scores, 70% demand and 30% supply tightness. When a sub-score has too little data to compute, it is replaced with 50, a neutral value, rather than dropped. A score built on one real sub-score therefore still reads mid-range and looks unremarkable. Its paired confidence field is the only signal that this happened. Read the two together or not at all.

One name that means something different here

vacancy_rate in this layer is residential vacancy from the Census American Community Survey. It is a housing-stock measure covering homes, not a commercial market vacancy rate for office, industrial, or retail space.

The connected metro-index and economic-indicator reads do not provide a commercial market vacancy series. A broker report linked to a deal may carry a figure on its own source, grain, and period; it remains separate evidence rather than an index figure. See Coverage, freshness, and limits.

Vintages vary by series

These metrics are not published on one calendar, and EQUIRE does not force them onto one. Monthly employment series, Census ACS rolling estimates, and annual business-dynamics or migration series each carry their own publisher vintage. Use the observation date attached to a figure rather than assuming all measures are equally current.

Each metric carries its own observation date. When Market research compares a figure against your underwriting, it shows that date rather than the date the comparison ran.

Where this layer appears

• Deal chat, Portfolio chat, and Prospecting chat read it through getMarketData, compareMarkets, searchMarkets, getMarketTrends, and getNationalMacro when Market data is enabled in chat settings.
• Market research reads it for the Metro tab peer comparison and trend charts, the hazard exposure, and the inflation check behind expense growth.
• Valuation does not read it. Assumption changes sourced from market evidence arrive as proposals, never as applied values.