Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
The media is quick to point out the dismal sales performance of numerous retail chains. Reports of significant decreases in comp sales are reported daily and full economic recovery is clearly tied to a resurgence of retail sales. While, the end of the recession may be near, retail sales will lag far behind a recovery. Why? There are too many consumers with too much debt, high unemployment, and homes under water to consider shopping for anything other than necessities. With consumer expenditures accounting for almost 70% of all economic activity and without a confident consumer, retail sales are going to continue in their depressed state, even as other signs of a recovery appear to be positive.
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Tags: consumer, consumer spending, economy, Real Estate, recession, Retail
Posted in Retail | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
One of the most misused statistics in researching trade areas is that of average household income, because median income figures are often confused with average and mean incomes. An average household income is obtained by adding up the income of all homes in a study area and then dividing it by the number of home units in the study area. Conversely, a median household income is the middle number in a string of values where half of the numbers are above the median and half are below. A simple example could be in a remote area where three of five homes have annual incomes of $40,000, $40,000 and $60,000 respectively and another two houses have incomes of $200,000 each. In this example, the median income would be $60,000, but the average income would be $108,000. In this case, the median income of $60,000 would tell you very little about the buying power of the neighborhood and the fact that the homes with incomes of $200,000 would typically spend substantially more than those households at the median or below. How much more? – three to five times more than the average income.
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Tags: household income
Posted in Real Estate | No Comments »