Population changes and migration can significantly impact commercial real estate and retail planning. These changes can affect trade area and market demographics and can influence which businesses may be a good fit. With Placer, you can understand migration patterns in a specific trade area, as well as highlight trends in population change.

You’ll be able to answer these questions after reading this article:

1. How can you see population change trends in your trade area?
2. How can you see expected changes to trade areas in years to come?
3. How can you see macro visitation trends and demographic factors that shape local communities and consumer demand?

Get started with the following steps:

Review the Audience Profile for population change data points

a. Open the Placer report for the POI^{Point (Location) of Interest.}, navigate to the Demographics page, and refer to Audience Profile.

b. Select the trade area type you’d like to use for the report (True Trade Area, Drive Time, Walk Time, or Distance in Miles).

c. Select STI Popstats from the drop-down menu as the dataset of choice, with 2021 as the template to get the most current information (if the dataset is not visible, click View more Datasets to add it).

d. The sections Population (near the top) and Population Change (near the bottom) highlight the trends in population change in the trade area you’ve selected. 

e. If you reset the template to 2026 or 2031 Projection, you can see additional information on how the demographics of this trade area are expected to change over the next 5 and 10 years.

Pro Tip: Use Placer’s Migration Trends Report for more advanced insights. Placer’s Migration Trends Report allows you to explore population flows at the state, county, CBSA, or zip code level within the US. This report presents visually and interactively the destinations to which the U.S. population migrated, and the regions they left, revealing macro visitation trends and associated demographic factors that shape local communities and consumer demand. For more information on Migration Trends Report or to request pricing information, click here.