Course Summary
This introductory half-day course is designed to help professionals involved in the urban development industry understand the property market data landscape, interpret key indicators and apply insights to support project decisions.
Participants will gain an understanding of:
- the key data sources available,
- how to access and interpret market information, and
- how market intelligence is used by planners, consultants and developers across phases of a development project lifecycle.
Through practical demonstrations, industry case studies and a hands-on workshop, participants will learn how to move beyond the data itself to identify meaningful insights that support project recommendations and decision-making.
Who Should Attend?
- Development Managers (ADM/DM/SDM)
- Acquisition Managers
- Planners
- Property Analysts / Researchers
- Sales and product strategy teams
- Consultants involved in feasibility, due diligence and approvals
- Anyone seeking to improve their understanding and use of property market data for better decision making
Course Outline
Session 1: Welcome and why market data matters (15 min)
Key topics:
- Why market data and data literacy matter
- The difference between data, insight and decision
- The role of market intelligence in development
- High level overview of the project lifecycle and where market data informs decisions
Session 2: Understanding property market data and UDIA WA’s Research & Insights Portal (75 min)
Key topics:
- Understanding the property market data landscape
- Key property market indicators across demand, supply, price and velocity
- Economic and demographic drivers
- Key data sources available to industry, including UDIA WA, government, commercial providers and internal project data
- What different datasets are best used for and how they complement each other
- Data interpretation fundamentals
- Leading versus lagging indicators
- Reading trends rather than relying on individual data points
- Understanding geographic scale and market context
- Common interpretation errors and limitations
- UDIA WA Research & Insights Portal – Rapid Demo
- Overview of UDIA WA’s data and research ecosystem
- What information is available through the portal
- How to navigate dashboards, filters and geographic views
- How to interpret & extract common charts and indicators
- Examples of how portal data can support typical industry questions & reporting requirements
Interactive element
- Mini exercise: Thinking about data insights you might need for your role, which datasets would you use and why?
Session 3: Market assessment and highest and best use analysis (50 min)
- Focus: How planners and market analysts use property data to assess development opportunities.
Key topics
- What a market assessment is and what it should cover
- Identifying market demand, supply and potential gaps
- Using market evidence to assess highest and best use
- Residential, commercial and mixed-use considerations
- Translating market evidence into clear findings and recommendations
Applied examples
- Case studies illustrating how data influenced the assessment and preferred use of a site to result in a favorable outcome
Session 4: Applying market data in development projects (60 min)
- Focus: How developers use market data to inform practical project decisions.
Key topics
- Acquisition
- What data matters when assessing a potential site
- How market evidence is balanced with project risk and judgement
- Planning and product positioning
- Using data to support planning strategy and project design
- Identifying target markets and informing product mix
- Feasibility
- Using market evidence to support pricing, demand and absorption assumptions
- Understanding competitor projects and market positioning
- Communicating insights
- Presenting a clear market narrative to boards and investors
- Using evidence to support stakeholder discussions and project recommendations
Applied examples
- Case studies showing how market data influenced acquisition, planning, product, feasibility or staging decisions.
Session 5: Workshop – Preparing a market assessment for a development (45 min)
- Purpose: Apply the course concepts to a hypothetical development site.
- Working in small groups, participants use a provided site scenario and data pack to populate a simple market assessment template and report back on:
- What is the data telling us?
- What development outcome does the data support?
- What are the key risks, assumptions or information gaps?
- What recommendation is proposed and why?
- Facilitator feedback
Presenters
Toby Adams
Head of Research National & WA | UDIA WA
Tim Connoley
Partner | Urbis
Harpreet Kaler
Development Manager | Stockland
Pricing
To obtain member rates please use your company email when registering. All prices are inclusive of GST.
Member: $550 pp
Non-member: $715 pp
