As the college basketball tournament heads into its final weekend, we took one more swing at predicting the outcome using a wide range of LightBox data.
The four remaining teams—Michigan (Ann Arbor), Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), Arizona (Tucson), and UConn (Storrs)—represent very different markets. Some are dense, mixed-use ecosystems. Others are more campus-centric and rural. All have distinct real estate footprints, ownership patterns, and levels of surrounding economic activity.
So we built a simple framework using three signals:
- Campus footprint & ownership structure (scale, density, fragmentation)
- CRE deal activity within 3 miles (market momentum)
- “School spirit” (based on historical city directory data showing how often local businesses reference team mascots over time) because if real estate tells you how a place is built, city directories tell you how deeply a university is felt in the community.
| Team | Density of Campus Footprint | Parcel Ownership | CRE Dealmaking | School Spirit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michigan Wolverines | 0.23 (456 parcels/2,010 acres) | 200 | 61 | 4.80 |
| Illinois Illini | 0.30 (428 parcels/1,427 acres) | 100 | 293 | 3.49 |
| Arizona Wildcats | 0.04 (891 parcels/22,400 acres) | 95 | 377 | 1.08 |
| UConn Huskies | 0.02 (54 parcels/2,849 acres) | 22 | 1 | 0.48 |
NOTES: Campus footprint density measures each school’s density based on the number of parcels in the campus footprint over the total acreage. LightBox’s Corporate Owner provided the number of distinct property owners across campus parcels. CRE dealmaking score is a measure of deals within a 3-mile radius within the last 12 months. Team spirit measures the number of business listings containing the team mascot name normalized per 10,000 main occupant listings in LightBox’s City Directory data set which spans anywhere from 1,844 books and 121 years in Ann Arbor to 75 books and 33 years in Storrs.
What the Data Says
You can make a strong case for each team. For instance:
- Arizona dominates on deal activity—Tucson is the most active CRE market in the group.
- Illinois combines density and strong local deal flow.
- UConn shows a tight, cohesive campus but limited surrounding activity.
- But Michigan stands out for balance.
Ann Arbor combines a dense, highly distributed footprint, meaningful deal activity, and the strongest “school spirit” signal by a wide margin, a reflection of deep, long-standing local identity captured in over a century of city directory data.
And that mix is a differentiator. It suggests not just a strong campus, but a deeply embedded ecosystem around it, both economically and culturally.
Prediction: Michigan Takes It
Based on LightBox data, Michigan comes out on top.
Not because it leads in every category, but because it performs consistently across all of them:
- A scaled but navigable footprint
- An active but not overheated CRE market
- And the strongest historical signal of local identity and continuity across the four teams
Of course, this is March and these tournaments are unpredictable (just ask any UConn fan). But if you were picking based on real estate fundamentals and a century of local business identity, the LightBox data points to Michigan.
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NOTE: Special thanks to Richard White, Caroline Stoll, and Garrett Quathamer for their assistance with the LightBox data that formed the basis of this analysis.
The CRE Market Bracket and associated predictions are for entertainment purposes only. They are based on historical data and internal analytics and do not constitute investment advice or assurances of future market performance.
