National and local research…

National and local research consistently finds that a growing percentage of millenials and downsizing baby boomers desire attached or mixed-with-commerical residential units because of their “place” factor. Communities clearly want to attract housing activity, however, many either do not recognize that talent desires said residential housing types, or their plans and codes do not allow such housing types to be developed. This obstacle may be overcome through developing and
promoting use of residential Target Market Analyses.

A residential Target Market Analysis (or TMA) is a real estate development feasibility
analysis that identifies potential household retention and growth in a location (market)
by identifying the housing types that match the preferences of target markets in that
area or on the move. The TMA approach is different from traditional housing market
studies in that it determines the market potential of moving or migrating households
rather than only the demand of households already living in the market. This work:

1. Identifies those households that are migrating or moving to or within a market
and their lifestyle preferences (the Target Markets), highlighting those with a
clear preference for place-based housing types, and

2. Details the preferences of the Target Markets and their propensity to purchase or
rent the housing types, IF they were available in the market.

TMAs are an improvement over traditional supply-demand studies because they allow
for consideration that many households would make different housing choices if they
had the option of choosing among a wide range of housing types in a market. In
Ontario, most of our urban places do NOT have such range of housing types, thus
making it difficult for households to choose or forcing them to choose locations where there ARE such options.

Because talent drain is in large part due to the lack of urban housing options, TMAs are a key strategic activity to reverse that dynamic. By promoting and financially supporting TMAs which then influence communities, nonprofits, and developers to change their housing product offerings to include and even focus on the Missing Middle building types, our present and future real estate development projects will change to become talent retention and attraction tools as part of the local Placemaking process.