Zimmerman/Volk Associates

Zimmerman/Volk Associates produces residential market analysis for walkable neighborhoods across the United States and Canada, using the target market methodology the firm created. A study is meant to give direction for planning, design and policy decisions and to supply the revenue assumptions in a development pro forma.

Each study establishes where the potential renters and buyers of housing in a study area currently live (the draw areas), how many households could move within or to the area each year, who those target households are, what they can afford and prefer in aggregate (rental or ownership, multi-family or single-family), what alternatives they have now, which unit types, sizes, configurations and market-entry rents or prices match them, and how quickly new units should lease or sell.

The firm also publishes online tools. A household migration map covers all 50 states and 3,142 counties and county equivalents, built from the IRS five-year state-to-state and county-to-county taxpayer migration records and supplemented with American Community Survey five-year estimates. The ZVA Mobility Distribution Indices score a county's market activity against its share of the market being examined, nationally or within its state; a detailed county report, including demographic and housing characteristics and the underlying intra-county, intra-state and inter-state indices, sells for $50.

The practice is small, listing four people, and works from Clinton, New Jersey. Its principals have conducted more than 120 downtown studies, in cities ranging from Petersburg, Virginia (population 32,400) to Detroit, Michigan (population 713,000), and the methodology has been extended to Canada and to West Coast assignments. Study fees are not published, and part of the site sits behind a client account log-in.