deepblog

StartUp innovation techniques from Silicon Valley. 

Is investment automation possible in real estate development? Over the past two weeks, I’ve shared findings from an automated, data-driven investment method. The objective is to find investment opportunities instantly and at scale to increase investment funds’ efficiency and speed. Ultimately, our fund. Why Deepblocks spent so much time digitizing...

The Densest Neighborhoods in Irving, Texas

Is it possible that the highest density doesn’t always indicate a city’s downtown district? We expected to find downtown Irving within the top five densest census tracts based on total buildable, but to my dismay, downtown Irving was not one of them. It was troublesome because we wanted a data-driven...

What caused the 2018 construction boom in Irving, Texas?

Irving, Texas, went from building an average of five million square feet per year to 60 million square feet in 2018. Did Irving, Texas, really finish 60,000,000 SF of construction in 2018? When we compared construction activity within the last ten years across Fort Worth, Dallas, Irving, Garland, and Arlington....

Comparing 50-year construction trends between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas.

Dallas and Forth Worth have inverse 50-year construction trends. How should we interpret these trend lines? According to our 50-year construction trend data, Fort Worth is increasingly bullish on new development, while Dallas is not so much. If we started the trend line in 1990, the two cities would look...

Deepblocks launches functionality to export development assumptions.

FEATURE FRIDAY With Deepblocks, you can export a CSV of the back-of-the-envelope development assumptions and integrate it into your pro forma. There is nothing like building your own real estate development pro-forma. Everyone has their flavor, from simple sketches to elaborate forty-tab masterpieces. A pro-forma is a perspective on the...

Density is the next level investment metric.

What is density, and how can we use it to identify early real estate investment opportunities? There are many ways to look at geographic data, and when we started developing a Deepblocks index for investment, we hit a few stumbling blocks. For example, when we looked for census tracts with...

Real Estate Investment Automation: Narrowing down the best neighborhoods.

We used a data-driven approach to narrow down the best neighborhoods in Fort Worth, Texas. Fort Worth, Texas, has 218 census tracts. The data we’ve considered includes population and economic growth, construction activity, existing and potential density, and an index created from all the metrics combined. Where are Fort Worth's...

How is data science different from software engineering?

The difference between data science and software engineering is often misunderstood, sometimes by engineers. A few years back, many engineers transitioned to data science when the AI craze was at an all-time high. Excited by the potential machine learning (ML), they eagerly loaded unexplored CSVs onto off-the-shelve ML models. After...

Looking for Multifamily Development Opportunities?

The easiest way to find development opportunities for multifamily is to canvass the city based on units allowed. Deepblocks has built a city-wide search in which every parcel already has all its zoning rules baked in; that way, they are searchable. Searching by units allowed is most straightforward in cities...

Why is the total buildable area the ultimate zoning value?

Total buildable area is the ultimate zoning value because it can be used to compare all parcels across a city. Total buildable area normalizes parcels and allows us to compare how much we can build, apples to apples. At the city scale, this metric gives us an instant snapshot of...

What are the goals of our cities?

What are the goals of our cities? Conserve and replenish natural environments Inclusivity and support for social interaction Attract private investments Our cities result from geometric urban design in collision with the economics of real estate development. Shaping a city is not trivial. Architects and urban planners mostly do this...

Why can’t humans predict exponential growth?

During my time at Singularity, in a lecture by Pascal Finette, I had one of my career’s most important epiphanies—humans can’t predict exponential growth. They say live in the moment, trust the process, be open-minded. That is as good as it gets, at least regarding the future. What is exponential...