How Stratara reads U.S. markets
Stratara turns 28+ primary government data sources into one unified read of every U.S. metro and county — across demographics, employment, housing, health, environment, and infrastructure. This page documents what we ingest, how we compute, what we surface, and — just as important — what we don’t.
The principle
The product is the methodology. CoStar publishes data behind a $30,000/yr paywall. Green Street publishes opinions in PDFs. Stratara publishes both — transparently — at mid-market prices.
Real estate is downstream of demand drivers. Stratara is built on the premise that by the time a market reprices, the jobs, people, capital, and infrastructure that drove the move have already been visible in public datasets for months. This platform aggregates those signals — not just price history — so you see the upstream picture before it shows up in the comp sheet.
Data sources
All sources are public. Most are primary government surveys or regulatory filings. We re-ingest on each source’s native cadence and cache aggressively to keep page loads fast.
Demographics & Population
Economy & Labor
Housing & Real Estate
Health & Social
Environment & Risk
Education
Infrastructure & Connectivity
Crime & Policy
Composite indices & spoke scores
Every metro and county gets six “spoke” scores (0–100) plus a top-line composite. Each spoke is a weighted blend of sub-metrics derived from the sources above. If any sub-metric is missing for a geography, the spoke may be null — never defaulted to a neutral “50” — and the composite reflects only what we can substantiate.
The composite score is the weighted average of the six spokes. Data confidence is tracked separately and penalizes markets with sparse coverage.
Feeds from: population growth, in-migration rate, college attainment, IRS income flows, diversityScore
Feeds from: BLS LAUS, BLS QCEW industry diversity, BEA GDP, BEA income, FDIC deposits, federal employment share
Feeds from: Zillow ZHVI/ZORI, FHFA HPI, HUD FMR, Census permits, market heat
Feeds from: FBI crime, FEMA NRI expected annual loss, CDC PLACES, CDC SVI, eviction rate, overdose mortality
Feeds from: eviction timeline, rent control classification, property tax burden, foreclosure days
Feeds from: rent-to-income ratio, price-to-rent, 10-yr Treasury, population trajectory, job base diversity
Fair-value cap rate model
The fair-value cap rate is Stratara’s read of where a CRE market should price, given its fundamentals. Compared against the observed cap rate, it produces a verdict — CHEAP, FAIR, or RICH — plus a basis-point spread you can quote in a memo.
10Y Treasury (live, FRED) // base yield
+ 1.50% illiquidity premium // real estate vs. liquid assets
+ Regional Risk Premium (FEMA EAL, insurance, SVI) // hazard + vulnerability
− Growth Credit (pop Δ + income Δ + job Δ) // demand-driver uplift
- Base yield — current 10-year Treasury pulled live from FRED, recomputed daily. Never hardcoded.
- Illiquidity premium — fixed 150bps above the risk-free rate; reflects real estate’s lack of daily liquidity vs. publicly traded bonds.
- Regional risk premium — composite of FEMA NRI expected annual loss, insurance cost proxy, CDC SVI socioeconomic fragility, and fiscal health score.
- Growth credit — composite of population growth (Census/IRS), income growth (BEA), and job growth (BLS LAUS/QCEW).
The verdict is the spread between fair and observed. A market trading ≥50bps wide of fair is CHEAP; ≤−50bps is RICH. FAIR is everything in between.
What we don’t show
Equally important is what’s not on the page. Stratara’s policy is empty-state over fabrication:
- If we don’t have annual history for a geography, the historical chart shows an empty card — not a synthesized trend.
- If a composite input is missing, the spoke may be null — not defaulted to 50. Missing data degrades the data confidence score visibly.
- If FRED is unreachable, yield-dependent fields show “—” — not the last-known stale value.
- If a source hasn’t been ingested yet or the latest vintage isn’t available, the field is blank.
- If a metric is suppressed at the county level due to small sample size (common in ACS and CDC datasets), we display the suppression indicator rather than the censored value.
Update cadence
- Daily: 10-yr Treasury & Fed Funds (FRED) — all yield-dependent fields recomputed on each pull
- Monthly: BLS LAUS unemployment, Zillow ZHVI/ZORI, FHFA HPI, NOAA storm events
- Quarterly: BLS QCEW employment by sector, Census building permits, FCC broadband availability, EIA electricity prices
- Annual: Census ACS demographics & housing, IRS migration flows, BEA GDP & personal income, FEMA NRI, FBI crime, CDC PLACES, CDC SVI, CDC overdose mortality, EPA AQS air quality, EPA EJScreen, EPA walkability, NOAA climate normals, HUD FMR & CHAS, NCES IPEDS & CCD, FDIC bank deposits, CMS Medicare, DOE energy, BLS OEWS, DOT BTS airports, USDA rural, Eviction Lab, MIT elections, ACS housing & commute extras
- On change / periodic: USAspending.gov contract awards, Inside Airbnb STR listings
Each metric card in the app displays the data vintage year so you can see exactly which ACS release or which FEMA NRI version is behind a given number.
Limitations & attributions
- Commercial CRE sub-market data (multifamily occupancy, office vacancy, retail/industrial absorption, CRE transaction cap rates) depends on commercial data licensing from CoStar, MSCI/RCA, or similar. These fields are not currently in Stratara.
- Small-area suppression: Many federal datasets suppress county-level figures for small populations (typically n<20). Stratara displays the suppression indicator rather than fabricating a value.
- Geographic unit mismatch: Some sources publish at ZIP code, census tract, or metropolitan division — not county. We aggregate upward or map to the nearest containing geography using Census TIGER/Line crosswalks.
- Data is for informational purposes only. Stratara is not investment advice.
- We update this page when the methodology changes materially.
Third-Party Attributions
- Eviction Lab data is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Princeton University Eviction Lab, evictionlab.org.
- All other sources are U.S. federal government publications in the public domain, or publicly licensed under open data terms.
Data is for informational purposes only. Not investment advice. Eviction Lab data used under CC BY 4.0.