Brad Hunter
Chief Economist & National Director of Consulting Metrostudy
Brad Hunter spearheads Metrostudy’s current work with the investment community and national developer/builder clients. He also presents original research and insights to the federal agencies that are now dealing with the current housing crisis. A large part of his work lately has been with private equity funds, hedge funds, and pension fund advisors. He supervises the bulk of the company’s multi-market studies, and has orchestrated hundreds of site-specific or area-specific housing market studies over the past twenty-plus years. Metrostudy is the nation’s premier advisor on local and regional housing market conditions. The firm provides feasibility studies and a comprehensive quarterly service covering a 100% count of activity and inventory in all subdivisions within the 256 counties (touching 84 MSAs) within which it does quarterly research. The company has 500 dedicated researchers in place across all of those markets. The firm’s unmatched database provides the quantitative foundation for its consulting and advisory work, and backs up Mr. Hunter’s forecasts of the housing market, which have been consistently more accurate than those of most other economists.
With nearly 25 years worth of experience in real estate analysis and local market economic forecasting, Brad Hunter is a Full Member of the Urban Land Institute, has authored numerous articles and chapters in books for ULI, including Market Profiles, and serves on the Housing Market Forecast Panel for the Housing Market Report. He is regularly cited in local and national journals, and has recently been featured in the Wall Street Journal and on Bloomberg News (including interviews on a variety of Bloomberg’s radio shows). His analysis is also featured in a new book called Foreclosure Nation that has just been published. He graduated in 1985 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics and has been a guest lecturer at Harvard University.
Hunter is a speaker at conferences on real estate opportunities and investing, as well as at ULI conferences, and is frequently called upon by key regulatory agencies of the U.S. government for his insights on the housing sector.
Hunter has tracked and forecast housing markets and demographic/economic trends at the local level for nearly 25 years. Prior to joining Metrostudy, he was President and Principal of Powers-Hunter Group, a real estate consulting firm that served developers, investors, and lenders in the form of site/project-specific market studies and consulting. From 1988 to 1991, he was Vice President and Chief Economist for Goodkin Research Corporation. During the 1980s, he served as a regional Research Economist with Data Resources/McGraw-Hill, producing all of the firm’s forecasts regarding population, employment and housing for the southeastern United States. While at DRI, Hunter authored several chapters of the book Metro Insights, published by McGraw-Hill, covering all key aspects of the economies and housing markets of the Top 100 MSAs in the country.
