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To assess a real estate project’s economic impact, estimate what it would add to the local economy compared with what would happen without it or under a realistic alternative. Count construction and ongoing operations separately, subtract activity that is displaced or would have happened anyway, and calculate municipal revenues and costs as a separate question. Gross spending or modeled jobs alone do not establish a net benefit to the city.
Set the decision, study area and counterfactual
Start by stating what decision the analysis will inform: for example, whether to approve a proposal, choose between sites, or compare development options. Define the proposal and the alternative in enough detail that their effects can be compared.
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- Project: Record the proposed uses, size, schedule, existing site use, and expected operating pattern.
- Study area: Specify the geography meant by “local”—such as the city boundary, a labor-market area, or a defined neighborhood—and use it consistently.
- People and firms: Identify whose outcomes are in scope, including affected residents, workers, businesses, landowners, and public agencies.
- Time and prices: Set the construction and operating periods, the forecast horizon, and whether monetary estimates are nominal or adjusted to a stated base year.
- Counterfactual: Describe what is likely to happen without the project, or under the most plausible alternative use. Include activity already taking place at the site and activity that would occur regardless of approval.
The counterfactual is what turns a forecast into an estimate of change. If a site already generates property tax or supports jobs, do not credit all of that existing activity to the proposed development. If an alternative project is realistic, compare against it rather than assuming the site would remain unused.
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Separate temporary construction from ongoing operations
Construction and stabilized operations answer different questions and should be reported separately. Construction effects are tied to a build schedule; operating effects recur or occur periodically after the development opens. Mixing them into a single total can obscure when impacts happen and whether they last.
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| Phase | What to estimate | What to disclose |
|---|---|---|
| Construction | Project spending and associated employment or supplier activity, if estimated | Build schedule, geography, price basis, and whether job figures are annual, peak-period, or cumulative |
| Operations | Ongoing employment, wages, business activity, public revenues, and service or infrastructure costs | Stabilization assumptions, recurring period, forecast horizon, and any one-time effects |
When using a regional input-output model, label direct effects at the project, indirect effects at suppliers, and induced effects associated with household spending. Explain the model, its version if known, the geographic area, inputs, and assumptions. These are modeled estimates, not observed outcomes; multipliers are not universal constants that can be transferred unchanged to another city or project.
Estimate what is genuinely additional
Gross activity is not the same as net local impact. Adjust for effects that reduce the amount of new activity attributable to the proposal, and explain the evidence behind each adjustment.
- Deadweight: Activity that would happen without the project.
- Displacement: Local activity or jobs lost because spending, customers, or firms shift from another part of the study area.
- Substitution: A change in who or what performs an activity, such as one group of workers replacing another, rather than a net increase in activity.
- Leakage: Spending, wages, profits, or supplier activity that flows outside the defined area.
- Opportunity cost: Benefits forgone by using land, public funds, infrastructure capacity, or other scarce resources for this proposal instead of the next-best alternative.
Use ranges or sensitivity tests when these factors cannot be estimated precisely. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s MHCLG Appraisal Guide, fourth edition, updated 18 February 2026, says an economic appraisal should seek to capture all costs and benefits of an intervention. Its guidance is for England; its appraisal structure can inform thinking elsewhere, but it is not automatically the governing method or rule in another jurisdiction.
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Check for double counting as well. For example, if a benefit is already reflected in a land-value uplift estimate, adding it again as a separate external benefit can inflate the result. The MHCLG technical annex emphasizes that ex-ante additionality can be difficult to quantify and calls for rigorous sensitivity analysis.
Calculate the city’s fiscal impact separately
A project’s total economic output is not municipal revenue, and municipal revenue is not a fiscal surplus. Estimate incremental public income and incremental public costs against the same counterfactual and over the same time horizon.
- List relevant one-time and recurring revenue sources under the city’s local rules, such as applicable property taxes, fees, or other project-related receipts.
- Estimate added service and infrastructure costs, using the city’s own service responsibilities and cost assumptions.
- Account for revenue already associated with the site in the no-project case.
- Show timing and price basis, and distinguish first-year or stabilized-year estimates from cumulative totals.
Local tax rules, fees, service obligations, infrastructure needs, and available data vary by city. Without those details, a general method cannot establish whether a particular proposal will produce a net fiscal gain.
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Include material effects beyond project accounts
Assess effects on people and firms outside the development itself when they are material to the decision. Depending on the project and location, relevant topics can include nearby business turnover, employment, wages and productivity; transport and environmental effects; cultural and amenity conditions; health and education; and agglomeration effects from firms or workers locating near one another.
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Show who is likely to gain and who may bear costs, rather than treating a citywide total as though all residents experience it equally. The MHCLG guide distinguishes impacts on occupants and firms from external effects on the surrounding area. A UK government study published 6 February 2019 examined local employment, turnover, wages, and productivity for office, manufacturing, and warehousing property, but excluded sector-specific sites such as farms and retail outlets; its scope should not be generalized to every development type.
Include only effects relevant to the decision and avoid counting the same effect in multiple measures. Historical findings from the U.S. HUD Urban Development Action Grant evaluation, for example, are tied to that program and period, not a current forecast for a proposed development in another city.
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Compare proposals on consistent terms
For two or more options, keep the study area, time horizon, counterfactual, price basis, and definitions of effects consistent. A useful comparison distinguishes net additional activity from gross modeled activity and makes fiscal and distributional trade-offs visible.
| Comparison dimension | Question to answer |
|---|---|
| Economic activity | What net additional activity is estimated after deadweight, displacement, substitution, and leakage? |
| Local retention | How much employment, income, and supplier activity is expected to remain within the stated geography? |
| Jobs | How many jobs are estimated, for what phase and period, and what is known about job quality? |
| Public finances | How do incremental revenues compare with service and infrastructure costs? |
| External effects | What material costs and benefits fall on residents, firms, or public services beyond the project? |
This is a practical synthesis for comparing options, not a universal prescribed scorecard. If an effect cannot be quantified credibly, describe it transparently rather than implying that the numerical totals capture everything.
Show uncertainty and make the result auditable
A city decision-maker should be able to see how the result was produced and how much it depends on uncertain assumptions. Report the data sources, model and version where relevant, study geography, counterfactual, time horizon, price basis, and methods used to estimate additionality. Show ranges or sensitivity results for the assumptions most likely to change the conclusion.
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Keep modeled estimates distinct from observed outcomes, and distinguish estimates from established local facts. If labor-market boundaries, tax treatment, service costs, or project timing are uncertain, state how those uncertainties affect the result instead of hiding them inside one precise-looking total.
What a case-study figure can—and cannot—tell you
IMPLAN’s Hawthorne, California case study illustrates how one mixed-use analysis separated construction from stabilized operations and accounted for existing site revenue. It describes a proposal for 274 market-rate apartments, 2,600 square feet of restaurant use, and a 177,000-square-foot parking garage. Its figures are examples from that case, not benchmarks for another project:
- The case study reports 608 modeled construction jobs across direct, indirect, and induced effects. The page does not state a publication year.
- It reports about $413,000 in annual general-fund revenue at stabilized operation and an approximately $405,000 net first stabilized-year municipal revenue impact after accounting for existing site property-tax revenue. These are case-specific estimates.
- For 2017–2040, it reports approximately $10.8 million in nominal net municipal revenue, or about $4.5 million in constant 2017 dollars. The page does not state a publication year.
The example shows why construction employment, operating-period revenue, existing-site activity, and long-term totals should not be collapsed into one headline number. It does not establish expected impacts for a different city, development mix, tax system, or set of assumptions.
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