By now you should have made a good start at identifying a shortlist of areas for further analysis, and begun creating heat maps to visualise the potential of each.  If you are struggling with either of these stages then please do let me know as I want to make sure we’re all starting to get a few options for potential investment areas.

Stage 2 Part 3 will get us to start looking at the strongest contenders for our investment area in more detail, to start to understand the demand and competitive landscape in each of them.

A big part of this is based around analysis carried out on online portals (SpareRoom being the most significant if you’re targeting the young professional market). As usual, I’ve gone in to more detail of what’s expected during the assignment in a PDF which you can download here.

From there, there are two videos to watch all about demand analysis, as well as a handy tracking template to use on a regular basis as you build out a deep understanding of the local market.

Lesson 2.5 – SpareRoom Demand Analysis

Lesson 2.6 – Other Demand Analysis

Take some time to go through this process for one of the areas on your shortlist to ensure you understand what’s involved, and then make a commitment to yourself to revisit the analysis on a weekly basis over the next few months to give you a much more insightful picture of the local market beyond just ‘rooms wanted’ vs ‘rooms available’ metrics.