District Formation · siftAO
Built for investors
operating outside their
home market.
Explore, visualize, and screen any U.S. market before you commit. 227 indicators. State to ZIP level. Before the flight.
Origin
I was handed an APN for raw land in a state I'd never visited. No comps, no context — just a parcel number and a seller's conviction. My family committed. A decade later, we're still waiting on the upside.
That gap — between what a seller presents and what the market actually shows — is why siftAO exists. After a decade in real estate across residential sales, acquisitions, and portfolio management, the pattern was consistent: investors make six-figure commitments based on a single proforma, one site visit, or one local contact.
The data to do better has always existed. It was just scattered across Census.gov, FRED, and MLS exports — and most investors don't have the time to stitch it together. siftAO does the integration so you can run a full market screen before you book anything.
What this is
A market screener. Not a strategy advisor.
siftAO doesn't tell you what to buy or how to structure the deal — that depends on the property and the investor. It gets you to the point where you know whether a market is worth pursuing at all.
Find markets you haven't considered.
50 states. County and ZIP level. Start with a map, a score, or a state index.
See the area in the data — not just a number.
Demographics, income distribution, housing age, supply gaps. Choropleth maps down to census tract level.
Five minutes. Full market read.
Demographic profile, FRED economic indicators, Redfin transaction data. 227 data points. Before you commit time or capital.
Go further or move on.
That's the only output that matters. The data shows whether the fundamentals clear your screen — you apply your own threshold.
Data sources
Four sources. One dashboard.
ACS 2023 — 108 indicators
Population, age distribution, income, race, education, housing value, rental market, vacancy, household type. State · County · ZIP · Tract.
Q4 2025 — 55 indicators
Unemployment, GDP, labor participation, building permits, house price index, per capita income — all with 2020 baseline comparisons. State · County.
Dec 2025 — 64 indicators
Median sale/list price, days on market, inventory, sold above list, price cuts, sale-to-list ratio. Filterable by property type. State · County · ZIP.
Realtor.com — 10 indicators
Active listings, median days on market, new listing count, price reduced count. County · ZIP.
What you can do
From proforma check to market thesis.
Verify the proforma rent number
Pull median rent by bedroom count for any ZIP. Compare it against what the seller is projecting.
Know your renter pool before you set targets
Income distribution shows what the market can actually pay. If your rent target is 40% of median income, you've shrunk the pool before you started.
Screen fundamentals against Bawa criteria
Population trajectory, poverty rate, vacancy, unemployment — ranked A through D across every scored county and ZIP in the U.S.
Spot block-level shifts with tract maps
Census tract choropleth for income, race, age, and housing — the micro-trends the county number smooths over.
Run an ROI calculation against real data
Cap rate, cash-on-cash, NOI, monthly cash flow — auto-filled with Census tax and rent data. Backwards-calc from a target cap rate to a max purchase price.
Export for lenders and partners
PDF one-pager or Excel workbook. All 227 indicators, organized by source — clean enough to hand to a lender or co-investor.
Who this is for
Local knowledge. Remote insight.
What the people who use this share isn't a credential — it's a situation. They're evaluating a market they don't already know.
Out-of-state investors
Screening markets they can't visit weekly. Need to know the fundamentals before they book a flight.
Foreign investors
Decoding U.S. micro-markets for the first time. Census tract data and market conditions in one place, not scattered across agencies.
Small developers
Validating site feasibility before committing. Permit activity, income trends, housing supply — before the LOI goes out.
Multifamily developers
Running an apartment development thesis with real demographic and market data — not a broker's deck.
Portfolio managers
Tracking fundamental shifts across multiple regions. Population trajectory, income growth, employment — the leading indicators, not the lagging ones.
Philosophy
"Locals know the vibe.
You have the data."
We don't predict markets. We don't sell hype. We show you what has happened — population, income, housing, economic activity — clearly, from state to tract level.
The strategy is yours. The screen is ours.
Before the flight. Before the meetings. Before the spreadsheet.
Run your first market screen.
Free access. No card required. Start with any county or ZIP.