Market Study · 6–10 Weeks
A site search will find the best site on your list.
It won't tell you the list was wrong.
That's not a flaw in the process. It's the scope. A search takes a defined geography and works downward — parcels, utilities, entitlements, incentives, a recommendation you can put in front of a board. It is very good at that. It does not stop in Month Four to ask whether the six states at the top of the page were the right six.
The cost of the wrong list is not that you make a bad decision. It's that you make a defensible decision inside the wrong set — and pay for eight months of diligence in markets that were never going to win, while the market that would have won was never evaluated at all.
A Market Study is the work that happens before the search: define the geography honestly, screen it against your actual requirements, and hand you a ranked short list with the cost math attached.
Why Long Lists Go Unexamined
Nobody is paid to question the geography
The market list is the most consequential and least examined document in a location decision. By the time it exists, it feels settled — it came from leadership, or from a prior project, or from a conversation at a conference. And once a search begins, every dollar spent inside that geography makes it harder to argue the geography was wrong.
Meanwhile, the parties best positioned to challenge it have reasons not to.
The broker's list is a listings list
Real estate expertise is real, and you will need it eventually. But a firm compensated on the transaction has a natural gravity toward markets where it has inventory, relationships, and a fee path. That's not misconduct — it's incentive. The practical effect is that the geography narrows before anyone has screened it.
The incentives firm's list is an incentives list
A contingent fee on captured incentives rewards the largest headline package, which tends to surface markets with aggressive programs rather than markets with the labor you need at the wage you can pay. A big package in a market that can't staff the second shift is not a win. It's an expensive lesson with a ribbon-cutting attached.
The community's list is one entry long
Economic development organizations are competing for your project, and the good ones are genuinely useful. But no community's data packet was built to tell you that the market three states over is a better fit. That's not their job. It's ours.
The internal list is an availability list
Your team knows the markets it knows. That knowledge is worth something — but it correlates with where you already are, not with where this project should go.
We run the screen from your side of the table, with the advantage of having spent years on the other one — building the packets, writing the RFI responses, and knowing exactly which numbers in them are load-bearing.
The Engagement · 6–10 Weeks
Five phases, front to back
The compressed timeline is the product of a defined scope — market level, not parcel level — and a screening framework that is locked before the analysis runs, so there's no mid-study debate about what the thresholds should have been.
Requirements and Decision Frame
Week 1–2What the project needs, and what deciding will actually take.
Before any geography is defined, we get specific about what the project actually needs and how the decision will be made. Headcount and wage band by role. Power and water demand, including the ramp. Inbound and outbound freight profile. Building envelope and acreage. Timeline to first production. Then the part most studies skip: who signs off, what they'll need to see, and which constraints are genuinely hard versus strongly preferred.
A written requirements document and a decision framework — scoring criteria, weights, and disqualifying thresholds — agreed in writing before we screen anything.
Geography Definition and Universe Build
Week 2–3The long list, built against requirements instead of convention.
We define the search universe deliberately rather than inheriting it. That means naming the markets you'd never accept and why, testing whether your assumed region is actually the right region, and building the long list against your requirements instead of against convention.
A documented universe of 40–60 markets with the geographic logic behind the boundaries, including a short list of markets you assumed were in play that we recommend cutting immediately — and the reason.
Screening Gates
Week 3–6Fatal flaws tested first, before anyone models cost.
Labor — occupation-level availability at your wage band, not headline workforce totals; competitive employer pressure; wage trajectory; turnover reality in the relevant industries. Power and utilities — market-level capacity posture, rate structure, and whether large-load projects in that market are currently waiting. Logistics — modeled inbound and outbound cost to your actual network, not drive-time rings. Site supply — whether the market contains a credible inventory of parcels at your acreage and readiness level. Risk and regulatory — natural hazard exposure, water availability, permitting posture, and the regulatory items that quietly govern schedule.
A screening matrix showing every market, every gate, and the specific reason each eliminated market failed. Eliminations are documented, not implied.
Comparative Cost and Incentive Ranges
Week 5–8What each surviving market actually costs to operate in.
Surviving markets go into a comparative operating cost model. Fully loaded labor, utility cost at your consumption profile, freight, and the tax burden that actually applies to your entity and asset mix. Then the incentives layer — modeled as defensible ranges based on statutory programs and comparable awards, not as promises. Where a program requires discretionary approval, we say so rather than counting it.
A ten-year comparative cost model you own and can rerun, plus an incentive range by market with the basis for each range stated.
Ranked Markets and Search Design
Week 8–10The recommendation, the tradeoffs, and the search it feeds.
The recommendation, the tradeoffs, and the thing that makes this a precursor rather than a report: the design of the search that comes next. Which markets to advance, what to ask each one for, in what sequence, and what would have to be true for the ranking to change.
A ranked short list of 3–5 markets with documented rationale, a sensitivity analysis showing which assumptions the ranking depends on, an executive-ready narrative deck, and a search plan — geography, sequence, and RFI framework — ready to execute.
Scope, Stated Plainly
We don't name sites. That's the point.
A Market Study ends at the market. You will not receive parcel recommendations, we will not visit sites, and nothing in the deliverable should be treated as diligence on a specific property.
That boundary is what makes the timeline and the fee possible. Parcel-level work — geotechnical review, utility capacity confirmation, entitlement path, wetlands, rail service verification — is slow and expensive because it has to be. Doing it across 40–60 markets would cost more than the decision it's informing. Doing it across three markets, after a screen, is exactly right.
What you'll have at the end is a defensible reason those three to five markets are the only ones worth spending real diligence dollars on — and a search that starts in Week One of the right geography instead of Month Five.
How We're Paid
Our fee doesn't move based on what you decide
Fixed fee, paid by you
Not contingent on incentives captured, not contingent on which market ranks first, not contingent on a transaction ever occurring. If the honest answer is that your incumbent market wins and you should stay put, we get paid the same to tell you that — and it happens more often than the category likes to admit.
No brokerage or transaction commission
We don't hold listings, we don't receive referral fees, and we have no economic interest in which market or property you ultimately choose.
We've been on the other side of the packet
We advise economic development organizations — it's half our practice and it's why we can read a data packet the way the person who wrote it does. We know exactly which numbers are selected because they're favorable rather than because they're relevant.
No community pays us inside your study
We do not take a fee from any community inside your active study geography, and that's written into the engagement. Conflicts are disclosed in writing at engagement, not explained afterward.
What to Expect
How we work
Principal-led, start to finish
The person who runs your kickoff runs your analysis and presents your recommendation. No handoff to an analyst.
Weeks, not quarters
Six to ten weeks, and the schedule is in the engagement letter. A screen that arrives after the capital decision is a document, not a decision tool.
Every number sourced
Each figure in the model carries its source and vintage. Where the data is weak, we say the data is weak instead of smoothing it.
Thresholds locked before the analysis runs
Scoring criteria and disqualifiers are agreed in Phase One and recorded. Nobody gets to move a threshold after seeing where a favored market landed.
Bad news early
If a requirement is internally inconsistent — the wage band won't buy the skill set, the timeline won't survive the power ask — you hear it in Week Two, when it's still cheap to change.
You own the model
Every workbook, every assumption, yours. You can rerun it, hand it to another advisor, or use it against us in a year. That's the correct arrangement.
Fit
This engagement fits a specific moment
It's built for you if:
- You have a project approved in principle and a market list nobody has stress-tested.
- Leadership is asking for a location recommendation and you need a defensible basis for the geography before you spend search budget.
- You're a PE sponsor or portfolio operator evaluating a footprint move, a consolidation, or a reshoring decision, and you need a credible cost delta by market on a diligence timeline.
- You're weighing expansion at an existing facility against a new market and want the comparison run by someone with no stake in the answer.
- You're entering a region for the first time and your internal knowledge of it is thin.
- You already know which markets you like and you'd rather find out now if you're wrong.
An honest note on where it doesn't fit:
If your geography is genuinely settled and you need parcels evaluated, utilities confirmed, and a recommendation you can sign — that's Corporate Site Search, and starting here would just add six weeks.
If your project is a hyperscale or AI campus where the interconnection queue governs the entire schedule, the screen is a different shape — see Data Center Advisory.
If you have a specific site under LOI and the utility assumptions haven't been tested, that's Utility Readiness Advisory.
And if this is a modest expansion adjacent to an existing plant, your labor pool is proven, and the operational logic is obvious — you may not need this. Say so on the fit call.
Often Paired With
Frequently combined
Corporate Site Search
The full engagement this study is designed to feed. The ranked markets become the search geography and the requirements document becomes the RFI.
Incentive Package Analysis
Where the Phase Four ranges become an actual negotiated ask, once you're down to finalists.
Utility Readiness Advisory
The parcel-level diligence this study deliberately doesn't attempt.
Data Center Advisory
For large-load projects where power availability drives the entire market screen.
Further Reading
The Site Selector's Playbook
The validation-first methodology used to advise $50M–$3B+ industrial location decisions — a framework that eliminates fatal flaws before they become expensive mistakes.
Site SelectionYou Already Know Who Won This RFP
There is a moment in every competitive site selection process where a seasoned practitioner looks at the finalist list and already knows how it ends. Here's what the project brief, incentive language, and timeline are actually telling you.
IncentivesStop Comparing Incentive Packages by Face Value
The conventional approach to evaluating economic development incentives — comparing total dollar values — is the wrong analysis. Here's a better framework built around timing, deliverability, and risk.
Start Here
Six weeks of screening is cheaper than eight months of diligence in the wrong state
Twenty minutes, no cost. Tell us the project, the markets currently on your list, and the date leadership expects a recommendation. We'll tell you which markets we'd challenge, whether six weeks or ten is the right scope, and whether you need this at all.
Schedule a Fit CallOr email [email protected]