5 Pitfalls to Watch for When Researching Niche Markets

Good Friday morning, Denise.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience and advice.

Have a great day!

Thanks for sharing Denise, great information on finding niche markets!!!

If you haven't taken a dive into your MLS stats and tried out its powerful market data tools, you're really missing out on an incredible opportunity to identify niche markets for growing your business, trends that will help your buyers and sellers, and so much more. It just gets better from there as you become more familiar with your market.

Hello Denise - sometimes food for thought is just an appetizer.  Additional time at the buffet of knowledge can bring a feast of insight.  Possibly a deeper understanding too.  

What is most fascinating to me in your post is that we don’t talk about middle housing. I recently wrote a post about a new listing and I said that it was a tableSpace kitchen and Nina Hollander said she had never heard that term. Isn’t it fascinating within our own country How different housing is from one state to another.  

And the data for vacant land or rural properties often does not include all the nuances from flood plains, to access (easements), to power, to water source, HOAs/POAs to fencing.Also if the listing agent has not been accurate in the data input (which I have discovered happens quite often), the data output is often in error. 

Great post that truly shows a live, human being with experience in any market is way better than AI.

Interesting term, Denise Lones—Middle Market! Like Lise Howe, I had never heard that term before. (BTW, I’ve heard of Table Space but, most of the time we use Eat-In!) ADUs are not favorable here and while we have properties that have them, we have no way to search for them (other than manually) in our system. 

I love your process- well researched and thought out. Manhattan doesn't have an MLS- but we do have something sort of close for agents. It's useful- but we need a better resource than we have. 

Years in the making, authorized by the city earlier this year, but still not yet entirely ready to move forward on authorizing apartments or bedrooms in basements and cellars as ADU's. A few months ago the city selected 11 neighborhoods that will qualify for this change- 6 of the 11 are in my coverage area- neighborhoods that aren't likely to flood. My own apartment is impacted by this change- as I own a 1st floor and cellar duplex. My cellar space was built as a finished space- and despite being below the level of the sidewalk- gets a surprising amount of direct sunlight. When I bought the apartment- I knew the cellar was zoned as a "Recreation Room" and the existing law was too narrow not permitting cellars to become living spaces. As a new construction building - completed in late 2005- my cellar space has 3 ways to exit- the interior staircase, a door to the building's common hallway- with the fire stairs next to that exit (the new law only requires 2 exits), and a 3rd exit- my cellar has a small but usable outdoor patio- with a sliding glass door to the patio (all that is needed in an emergency is a ladder) plus an additional window. These spaces also must have sprinklers and at least 7' ceiling heights. My apartment meets all these qualifications.  The existing law only permitted a half bath in the cellar space- but the developer built the space with the expectation that the owner might ignore the restrictions by having an unfinished "closet" in the bathroom that just so happens about the same size as a bathtub. Actually this is part of the reason for the push- there is a housing shortage and the city acknowledged that a lot of these spaces were already being used as bedrooms and full baths- whether they were zoned this way or not- so why not legalize them if there is a safe way to do it.  The city still hasn't released the final application but it should be available in the next few months- and I can finally legalize my cellar level bed and full bath- adding some additional value to my apartment. 

This has a lot of great info. Thanks,  Bookmarking for future reference

Our Team once had a listing with a ADU...a few years ago. When it went to contract, the appraiser said the ADU had no value but as a storage shed. That deal failed.

There has been lots of talk about ADUs but they seem to be only a little more common now. Hopefully, the appraisal industry has learned to give them a reasonable value.