Rent is the first number tenants look at — and the most misleading. A cheap unit in a dead spot costs more than an expensive one in a strong location. Here are five signals that tell you more about a site than the price per square metre.
1. Foot traffic across the day, not at rush hour
A single glance at 5 p.m. tells you nothing. What matters is the distribution of traffic across the whole day and week. A food spot living on office lunches dies at the weekend; a neighbourhood one is the opposite. Look at the profile, not one moment.
2. The mix of the neighbourhood, not just headcount
A thousand passers-by a day means nothing if it’s transit to the metro with no reason to stop. A mix of uses — offices, homes, services, anchor draws — keeps people around and turns flow into customers.
3. Competition: density can be a signal, not a threat
Intuition says “run from competition.” The data says otherwise. Some categories gain from clustering (food, fashion — the mall effect), others cannibalise (convenience stores). What matters is which group you’re in and how many players are already within real walking distance.
4. Spending power, computed on real data
Household income and property prices in range tell you whether the area can carry your basket. We compute this on real transaction prices (RCN) anchored to the market level — not asking prices, which tend to run high.
5. Accessibility: how easily people reach you
A stop 50 m away, good access, visibility from the pavement, a crossing on the right side of the street — small things that decide the size of your catchment. A physical barrier (rail tracks, an expressway) can cut off half of your theoretical customers.
None of these signals is visible in a lease listing. All of them can be measured on public and open data — which is exactly what a Optaloc report does, flagging the confidence of what is an estimate rather than a measurement.