TOPIC-DRIVEN MARKET INTELLIGENCE
Special Reports
for consequential decisions.
Focused, deeply researched analysis of the market forces, sectors and trends shaping Greater Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley.
- GPS Market Intel Special Reports may be purchased individually or bundled with an All-Access Subscription
Hyper-local focus
Greater Palm Springs and the nine-city region.
Primary research
Official sources, interviews and original analysis.
Decision-ready
Clear findings, context and implications.
Growing catalog
Regional reports organized in one searchable collection.
What Special Reports Deliver
Go deeper than the monthly view.
Some decisions demand more than a dashboard or market update. GPS Market Intel Special Reports examine a defined sector, policy, development category or investment question in detail.
Each report connects reliable data with local context, helping executives, public-sector leaders and investors understand what is changing, why it matters and what to do next.
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Focused by sector or issue
Research designed around a specific industry, policy question or regional opportunity.
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Grounded in local evidence
City, county, state and federal data translated for the Coachella Valley.
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Curated public research
Important agency reports gathered and organized in one useful regional catalog.
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Written for action
Concise takeaways and implications for people making consequential decisions.
Explore Our Latest Special Reports
The Population of Greater Palm Springs
Growth, Plateau & the Next Chapter
After a quarter century of near-automatic growth, Greater Palm Springs has hit a plateau, and the newest state data reveals exactly which cities are winning residents, which are quietly losing them, and the one housing threshold that separates the two. If your business plan, investment thesis, or city forecast still assumes yesterday's growth curve, this is the report that replaces assumption with evidence.
$149
Included with All-Access
The Part-Time
Valley
Who Actually Lives Here, and Where the homes Stand Empty
One home in four across the Coachella Valley's nine cities stands empty, and that single number, running from 48.8% in Indian Wells to just 2.7% in Coachella, explains nearly everything the region's conventional statistics cannot: shrinking cities amid a building boom, falling school enrollment, and an economy that breathes with the calendar. This report quantifies the valley's famous seasonality for the first time, then translates it into a working field guide for retailers, healthcare systems, investors, city finance directors, and marketers who need to know how many customers are actually behind those doors.
$149
Included with All-Access
The 55+ Gated-Community Economy
Active-Adult Housing as a Structural Force in Greater Palm Springs
Nearly 21,600 homes across the valley sit behind the gates of 55+ communities, forming a concentrated, politically organized, outside-income-funded economy that most market analyses treat as ordinary subdivisions. This report delivers the first complete city-by-city inventory of that sector, along with the spending power, healthcare pressures, and public-service obligations every city, developer, and health system will inherit as it ages in place.
$149
Included with All-Access
Powering the Coachella Valley's Growth
New IID Substations & Grid Capacity Upgrades Across the Eastern Valley
Electrical capacity, not land or demand, is the constraint deciding which eastern-valley projects move forward, and more than $50 million in new substations is being built to break the bottleneck. This report details every project reshaping the grid through 2028, including capacities, costs, financing structures, partnerships, and timelines, so developers, investors, and public agencies know exactly where the power is coming online, and when.
$149
Included with All-Access
The Owner's Manual
Who Governs What in the Coachella Valley
More than two dozen governments hold real authority in the Coachella Valley, including nine cities, five sovereign tribal nations, six water suppliers, two utilities, and three school districts, and their boundaries almost never match. This plain-language operating manual maps who actually controls each of sixteen core functions, so you learn the answer to "who needs to be in the room?" from a report instead of from an expensive mistake.
$95
Included with All-Access
The Checkerboard
A Buyer's, Lender's & Broker's Guide to Leased Land in the West Valley
On leased tribal land, the lease term is the transaction - yet most buyers learn this from agent lore rather than the record. From the 1876 railroad grant to today's financing rules, this guide gives buyers, out-of-area agents, and lenders the first rigorous, respectful, and practical explanation of how the West Valley's checkerboard actually works - and why it's a market structure to understand, not fear.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of Cathedral City
The valley's steady second city and its workforce heart: 51,458 residents, a large naturalized, homeowning immigrant middle class, and the west valley's most attainable ownership market. The profile for employers, retailers, and homebuilders who serve the people who keep the resort economy running.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of Coachella
The valley's growth engine: its youngest, fastest-growing city, 97.1% Hispanic or Latino, nearly fully occupied year-round, and the labor supply the resort economy depends on. The profile for builders, employers, and public agencies positioned where the valley's next decade is actually being built.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of Desert Hot Springs
The valley's working north in full detail: the highest renter share in the region, a decade of steady growth, and the market where housing's central question is asked in monthly rent rather than purchase price. Essential reading for rental investors, workforce-housing builders, and any operator whose customers live in the valley year-round.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of Indian Wells
The valley's quiet extreme: the oldest, wealthiest, and most educated city in the region, with per capita income of $148,564 and nearly half its homes seasonally empty. The definitive read on ultra-premium consumers, membership economics, and the mechanics of a community that imports its entire workforce.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of Indio
The valley's largest city and eastern anchor: 92,360 residents, 29,219 households (the region's biggest single-city consumer base), the eastern valley's largest job base, and a genuine middle class rare in this series. The volume market every regional strategy has to get right.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of La Quinta
Where resort meets family: an affluent, educated city that must serve retirees and young households at once, with a job base balanced almost exactly to its resident workforce. The blueprint for businesses building the resort/hometown hybrid that the valley's future increasingly resembles.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of Palm Desert
The valley's commercial heart, quantified: 30,634 jobs (the most in the valley), 166 home sales a month (its most liquid market), and the region's daytime capital of retail, education, and medicine. If your business depends on where the valley shops, works, and retires, this is the market to know first.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of Palm Springs
The valley's destination city decoded: who actually lives in the region's cultural capital, what its adult-skewed, small-household population buys, and why its home prices have corrected harder from the 2022 peak than any other valley market. For hospitality operators, developers, and investors who need to separate the visitor economy from the resident one.
$95
Included with All-Access
Demographic Profile
City of Rancho Mirage
Inside the gilded enclave: a senior-majority city with the valley's highest disability rate, a hospital-anchored job base importing nearly three workers for every employed resident, and wealth measured in assets rather than paychecks. Required intelligence for private-pay care, estate and trust services, and luxury real estate.
$95
Included with All-Access
The Status of Sports Betting in California
Power, Politics & the Country's Biggest Untapped Market
The nation's largest state remains its biggest untapped sports-betting market, and the reasons why hold enormous stakes for the tribal gaming economy at the heart of the Coachella Valley. This report unpacks the $400-million ballot war, the tribal-cardroom conflict, and the political mechanics of legalization, then lays out the three realistic paths forward and what each would mean for the region.
Complimentary
All-Access subscribers will automatically see this report in their account dashboard.
Data Centers Come to Greater Palm Springs
Power Economics, Water Politics & the AI Boom Meeting the Limits of the Desert
In a matter of weeks, three valley cities moved to block data centers, but this report reveals the quieter force that may decide the question before politics ever does: electricity priced at 2.3 times the national average. Read the analysis that separates the headlines from the economics, including the tariff that will reshape every large project's math and the four scenarios that determine whether the desert's data-center moment arrives at all.
Complimentary
All-Access subscribers will automatically see this report in their account dashboard.
110 and Rising
The Heat Record and What it Costs
In 2024, the Palm Springs station logged 83 days at or above 110 degrees, shattering a record that had stood for the entire century of measurement, and 2025's "relief" of 42 days would still have ranked among the hottest years of the twentieth century. This report publishes the complete 104-year ledger alongside the first full accounting of what the thermometer does to the valley's economy, tracing heat through five channels: outdoor labor and 65 heat-related deaths, the east valley's 12.5% summer unemployment, IID's record 1,177-megawatt peak, a $9.1-billion visitor economy racing the calendar, and the insurance premiums now pricing it all in.
Complimentary
All-Access subscribers will automatically see this report in their account dashboard.
CUSTOM RESEARCH
Need something that is not in the catalog?
GPS Market Intel produces custom reports for organizations that need research specific to a site, sector, development, policy question or business decision.
Our custom work draws on the same regional data infrastructure and analytical depth used for our published reports—applied to your specific location, market, industry or strategic question.
Turnaround time, scope and pricing are tailored to each engagement.
Common Engagements
- Project feasibility studies
- Business cluster and competitive analysis
- Site-selection market analysis
- Business-plan and grant-application market data
- Board and investor presentation research
- City or district economic baseline studies
- Guest and market surveys with complete analysis
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Thirty-two years of Greater Palm Springs/Coachella Valley market knowledge.
GPS Market Intel is led by Bob Marra, CEO/Publisher of Greater Palm Springs Business Insider and one of the valley's most experienced economic and business intelligence practitioners. Bob's background spans 32 years of hands-on research, consulting, and reporting on the local economy as the former owner of Wheeler's Market Intelligence and its flagship newsletter Wheeler's Desert Letter, and of The Public Record newspaper.