FCP Harnesses Technology For Exclusive Insights On In-Migration And The Case For Continued Growth Of Sunbelt Markets

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Nov 05, 2020, 11:59 ET

CHEVY CHASE, Md., Nov. 5, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- FCP_® has, over the years, invested heavily in developing technological tools that power its investment and asset management teams. In 2020, the company seamlessly expanded its focus on analytics and innovation, harnessing new technologies to maintain a technological advantage during challenging times for market intelligence. Utilizing these technologies, FCP embarked on a closer look at the U.S. in-migration trends to Sunbelt markets, establishing an exclusive agreement with geospatial analytics company, Orbital Insight.

In-migration trends in the U.S. have long been used as leading indicators of growth, but the data has mostly been government-sourced and distributed with a lag. In an effort to find more real time information to gauge the impact of the pandemic on migration patterns, FCP turned to cell phone data. FCP's Vice President for Research and Data Analytics, Matt Larriva, utilizing enhanced data and research capabilities through the exclusive agreement with Orbital Insight, examined historic in-migration trends as well as to-the-day migration movement through the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic to find out which cities residents were relocating to, and to substantiate a "swarm to warm" strategy that FCP has invested in for more than 10 years. Larriva analyzed Orbital Insight's data to provide the firm with unusually current data regarding in-migration movement as they identify and examine markets for national growth.

Insights from the data include:

Americans are a highly mobile population and renters move frequently and prefer to locate in or around major suburbs of MSAs.
Trends that originated in the 1950's that showed Sunbelt in-migration from Northern tier markets, have continued through the pandemic to date.
Migration trends can take decades to establish themselves but once in place are very "sticky", demonstrated by data showing that those that currently live in the Sunbelt and move, tend to stay in the Sunbelt.
Those trends become even more resilient once educational hubs produce employment hubs as they have in the Sunbelt.

FCP Managing Partner, Esko Korhonen, commented on the importance of the company's technological initiatives and the implications to its mission, saying, "FCP is at the forefront of the utilization of technology solutions and proprietary applications to generate industry-leading intelligence for our teams." Korhonen continued, "We believe the exclusive contract with Orbital Insight has provided Matt and the team with a data platform that allows for more precise research analysis. In this particular body of work, we believe the data speaks to the wisdom and resiliency of our continued investment in Sunbelt markets."

For more information on FCP's in-migration analysis, please contact Matt Larriva at [email protected].

Matt Larriva is Vice President for Research and Data Analytics at FCP_® where he leverages data science and quantitative methods to enhance asset selection, management, and disposition across real estate investments. His active research focuses on multivariate timeseries analysis as it applies to cap rate forecasting (Vector Error Correction Methods as models of US Real Estate Markets (working)), and random forest methods as they apply to submarket rent-growth in unstructured data (Semi-Greedy Construction of Oblique-Split Decision Trees (2019)). He has spoken at industry conferences regarding optimization of API interfaces and has been sourced in various news media regarding his use of alternate data for tracking migration patterns. His recent publication, co-authored with Dr. Peter Linneman, entitled "If interest rates drive cap rates, then where's the evidence?" was referred to by Linneman as "one of the most important pieces [Linneman] has ever published."

Prior to joining FCP, Matt worked at Green Street Advisors as the head of the US and UK Quant teams, managing the data efforts in the sell-side real estate research firm. While at Green Street, he focused on REIT trading strategies, data productization, and analytic enhancements. Matt completed his undergraduate degree in economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a Masters in applied statistics from UCLA and is a CFA charter holder and is a member of the American Statistical Association.

About FCP
FCP_® is a privately held real estate investment company that has invested in or financed more than $6 billion in assets since its founding in 1999. FCP invests directly and with operating partners in commercial and residential assets. The firm makes equity and mezzanine investments in income-producing and development properties. Based in Chevy Chase, MD, FCP invests both its commingled, discretionary funds and separate accounts targeted at major real estate markets in the United States. For further information on FCP, please visit www.fcpdc.com.