Three specific, named opportunities the public data flagged before the brokerages did: the LA/Chicago/DC urban recovery, the Sun Belt tertiary-metro divergence, and the post-industrial midwest reset.
Annual FBI crime stats are the wrong lens for retail siting. 311 disorder calls — graffiti, abandoned vehicles, noise — update daily and predict neighborhood trajectory 6–12 months earlier.
The IRS Statistics of Income migration data is the rawest income-by-flow signal in public records. Joined to the education-walkability-wage triangle, it identifies neighborhoods rents haven't caught up to yet.
Liquor license filings, job-posting salary gaps, and LEHD origin-destination flows are three independent leading indicators that each beat the consensus narrative — and together identify markets where commercial demand is genuinely accelerating.
