Beyond rental housing, one of my interests is personal investing, which, to learn more about, I read lots of articles and listen to podcasts. Recently I read an article entitled “The Limits of Numbers in Life and Investing” by Vishal Khandelwal. It makes some great points about data and numbers in investing and you can read it via the link below.
https://www.safalniveshak.com/limits-of-numbers-in-life-and-investing/
What does this have to do with rental housing? Any consultant worth his or her salt will understand that there are some things that don’t show up in the numbers. This is especially so in market surveys: you can gather as much data on buildings as you want, and put it into as many fancy tables and charts as you want, but that’s all you do then often you will have missed some key information, some intangibles, that don’t show up in the numbers. Remember, market surveys are about gauging the value proposition of rental properties in the eyes of renters, something which will not easily be defined by numbers.