Most important criteria for selecting a market?

[Jon Schwartz]

Hi all,

At the risk of having analysis paralysis, I've been having a lot of fun culling US Census data from the past 10-15 years and assessing markets by the hard numbers.

I'm about to do a big data pull (which is time-consuming), so I have a question for the experienced investors: what are the most important criteria or data points to consider when selecting a market?

So far, mine are:

• Population growth
• Job growth
• Employment diversity
• Rent growth
• Median income growth (though not too high!)
• Household formation growth

What else? What important metric am I overlooking? Commute time? Age of population? Percent of home-owners?

Thanks so much!

[Matthew Patrick]

Ok, this answer may be a totally "out of the box" one but it'll add to the discussion, and if you ponder, it does make sense for more established markets. 
If you follow the pop-ups of  some big box brands, you will find your work already done for you. Companies like Starbucks, Whole Foods and Trader Joes are chains that DO NOT franchise out, and so they have internal teams doing diligence, market metrics based on income and family size, and tend to pick good soil for their stores. 

Not your average metric, but it's something different to consider