How do you spot the seeds of winner towns?

What are the factors we need to look in order to get a sense the real estate in a town will start kicking butt?

Analysis of real estate markets hard for two reasons:

1. is the fact you have many factors that drive real estate... they don't add up in a linear fashion (i.e. x+y=great real estate)
   
2. There is such a long time lag for the results of the local leaders actions before real estate could change.

Let's take a story of Ottawa and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo area in 1990's. Ottawa hi-tech was on fire, companies like Nortel, JDS Uniphase, and Newbridge Networks were the darlings of the TSX. On the other hand KCW was a region in the middle of no where along the 401.

Flashfoward to now. RIM is on fire and KCW is home to many hot up and coming companies. Ottawa has some small promising startups...but nothing on the level that it once had.

Large companies have a huge impact on real estate, not only from driving up demand for office and industrial space...but in attracting employees for residential space. Understanding where a city will go real estate DOES involve studying the major employers in the area and to understand if they are on solid footing.