CensusVision

How CensusVision helps you understand local housing markets

Housing Demand & Market Size

Housing Affordability & Cost Burden

Community & Demographics

CensusVision dashboards showing tables, tree maps, bar charts describing the housing demand and trends.

Housing demand and market size

Household formation
Homeownership vs renter potential
Cash vs mortgage purchases
Relocation trends and opportunity

Define the true total addressable market for housing and homeownership—before loans are originated.

Affordability & Cost Burden

Housing cost burden comps between owners and renters
Income distributions
Insurance and tax payments
Affordability by household type

Understand who can realistically afford housing in a market—and where affordability constraints begin.

CensusVision dashboards showing community trends and demographics

Community & Demographics

Languages spoken at home
Education and occupation
Immigration, relocation, and household composition
Population change over time

Understand who lives in a community to tailor outreach, materials, and services across languages, income profiles, and housing needs.

What Questions Can CensusVision Answer Instantly?

Homeownership Gaps & SPCP Design

Where do homeownership gaps exist—and who is being left out?
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Identify disparities in homeownership by age, income, race, ethnicity, veteran status, and household type to support SPCP design and eligibility analysis grounded in community data.

Learn about SPCP

Affordability: Rent vs. Own

Can households realistically transition from renting to owning?
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Compare rent payments to estimated mortgage costs, taxes, insurance, and income to assess affordability gaps and evaluate where ownership becomes feasible—or remains out of reach.

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Relocation & Housing Demand

Who is moving, where are they going, and what housing do they need?

Analyze migration and relocation patterns to understand emerging demand, household formation, and the types of housing needed across markets and life stages.

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Age, Life Stage & Housing Needs

How do housing needs differ across life stages?

Understand the age distribution of renters and homeowners, identify concentrations of first-time buyers versus aging homeowners, and plan products or services accordingly.

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Veterans & Underserved Populations

Where are veteran and underserved populations concentrated in my market?

Analyze veteran status, disability indicators, and household characteristics to support targeted outreach, benefits alignment, and inclusive housing strategies.

Veteran Homeownership

Language, Immigration & Community Access

How do language and immigration patterns shape housing access?

Explore languages spoken at home, immigration status, education, occupation, and employment to design multilingual outreach, services, and materials that reflect real community needs.

Data Insight Example

Frequently asked questions

About CensusVision

What is CensusVision?

CensusVision is a community intelligence platform built on five years of ACS PUMS microdata. It helps lenders, nonprofits, and public agencies understand housing demand, affordability, demographics, and population dynamics beyond mortgage activity.

What data sources are used in CensusVision?

CensusVision is built on American Community Survey (ACS) 1-Year PUMS microdata from iPUMS USA, using a rolling five-year window to support stable, granular community analysis.

How does CensusVision help define total addressable markets?

CensusVision measures population, households, income, affordability, and housing characteristics to estimate true housing demand—before credit decisions occur—helping teams define the real size and structure of their market.

What kinds of questions can CensusVision answer?

CensusVision answers questions about who lives in a community, how households form, what housing they occupy, what they can afford, and where unmet demand or structural barriers exist.

How is CensusVision different from HMDA-based tools?

HMDA-based tools focus on mortgage applications and outcomes. CensusVision focuses on the underlying population and housing stock—providing context on demand, affordability, and demographics before lending occurs.

How often is CensusVision updated?

CensusVision is updated annually as new ACS microdata becomes available, maintaining a rolling five-year window to balance timeliness with statistical stability.

How is CensusVision different from data.census.gov?

data.census.gov is a general-purpose portal for accessing Census Bureau tables and reports across many policy domains. CensusVision is purpose-built for housing and housing finance use cases. It works directly with ACS PUMS microdata curated specifically for housing analysis, uses multiple years of data for trend analysis and forecasting, and provides interactive exploration designed around affordability, tenure, housing demand, and community context. CensusVision is built on microdata accessed via iPUMS USA, enabling analysis that is not possible through summary tables alone.

How is CensusVision different from HMDAVision?

CensusVision and HMDAVision answer different but complementary questions. CensusVision is built on survey-based, self-reported Census microdata and is designed to understand communities, affordability, population characteristics, and housing demand—what exists before a mortgage application. HMDAVision is built on loan-level HMDA transaction data reported by lenders under Regulation C, with strict reporting standards and regulatory guardrails, and focuses on actual mortgage applications, originations, pricing, and outcomes. Together, they allow users to connect housing demand and community context with observed mortgage credit outcomes.

Community intelligence for housing demand, affordability, and population dynamics.

What is CensusVision

We used CensusVision to understand local demographics and homeownership gaps in order to identify underserved communities and strategically target outreach.