Grocapitus CEO Neal Bawa Shares the Five Numbers He Checks Before Investing in Any U.S. City

Population, income, home values, crime trend and the last 12 months of jobs. Bawa says jobs matter most, and every number comes from free public websites.

FREMONT, CA, UNITED STATES, October 14, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Neal Bawa, founder and CEO of Grocapitus Investments, has posted the full version of "Location Magic," his free course on picking U.S. cities for rental real estate, with a written transcript. The course gives five tests that any investor can run on any metro, using the St. Louis Federal Reserve's FRED site, City-Data.com and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Bawa built the method because he did not trust tips. "Just because somebody at the water cooler said ... Fresno is best for investing ... do you really believe them? Shouldn't you verify? This course lets you verify," he said.

The five tests, with the 2026 targets:

1. Population growth from 2015 to 2024: 10.1% for metros of 250,000 to one million people, 6% for larger metros and 13% for smaller ones. Smaller places need more growth because "bad things can happen in smaller cities easily. Like one employer with 5,000 people closes down."
2. Median household income growth from 2000 to 2023: at least 52.7%. Without it, Bawa said, a metro "will basically have slow rent growth. Not just for you, but for every landlord in that city."
3. Median house or condo value growth from 2000 to 2023: at least 92%. Bawa expects to raise this target above 100% next year.
4. Crime falling over time, with the latest City-Data crime index below 450. "It's not about whether the city that you're investing in is high crime or low crime. It's about whether it's getting better," he said.
5. Job growth over the last 12 months: normally above 1%, though for this year Bawa suggests 0.5% because national hiring has been weak.

Which test matters most? "My answer is the fifth one. And the fifth one is jobs." His team once looked at five and ten years of job data and found the last 12 months tracked rents and home prices far better. "When people get jobs, they immediately start spending money on rents and on buying homes," he said.

The course also explains why Bawa favors owning rentals now. He said the income needed to buy a typical U.S. home is about $121,000, while median household income is about $84,000, a gap of roughly $37,000 that opened in about five years. "This affordability gap is astonishing. We've never seen anything like it."

The course and its spreadsheet are free. "Do we charge you for it? No. Is there a subscription? No," Bawa said.

The full video, with a written transcript, is at https://grocapitusnews.com/videos/5-data-points-that-reveal-winning-markets/ .

About Grocapitus Investments
Grocapitus Investments buys, builds and operates apartment, townhome and self-storage properties in the United States. Founder Neal Bawa teaches what the company learns on the Multifamily University YouTube channel. More at https://grocapitus.com and https://grocapitusnews.com .

Media contact: info@grocapitus.com

This release is for information only. It is not an offer to sell or a request to buy any security.

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Grocapitus Investments
(408) 583-6015
info@grocapitus.com

5 Data Points That Reveal Winning Markets