April 29th, 2010

The Rise of Neighborhood Search

By Colleen Staunton, Product Manager

The tagline ‘Real Estate is Local’ is often echoed by those in the Real Estate industry. Consumers are not only buying a house but they are ‘investing’ in the surrounding neighborhood as well. They often look to see if there are others with kids the same age as theirs, what the closest schools are, and where are the places to eat. All of these things are part of a neighborhood’s make-up.

In an article posted by Matt Carter on Inman News, Name your neighborhood: the new wave in real estate search, he discusses the growing importance of neighborhood search. While more and more real estate portals/brokerages are trying to implement this type of search, the concept is far from new. Onboard has for years talked of the need to provide consumers with the right type of information. This includes giving them insight into the local community, or neighborhood. Onboard clients Washington Post and Redfin are a few examples of clients of ours that use neighborhood boundaries on their websites. Others, like Prudential Douglas Elliman and NY Post provide neighborhood profiles using neighborhood level demographics, as opposed to the usual zip code level demographics.

Matt Carter pointed out how not everyone is in agreement on what the actual boundary of a neighborhood might be. Washington Post is a perfect example of this. They prefer to define their own boundaries since they feel they have the local knowledge. Onboard is able to easily geocode their boundaries and provide the matching community information. This site allows the user to research the neighborhoods and see the polygons laid out on a map all together. When searching for houses in a neighborhood on Redfin’s site the user will see the distinct outline of that neighborhood. Their listings are then shown within that neighborhood. Both use boundaries for slightly different reasons but are highly effective.

Washington Post Neighborhood Boundaries

Redfin Neighborhood Boundary - Back Bay, Boston

Another option is to allow users to ‘find’ what neighborhood is best for them. This is especially helpful in bigger cities or when home buyers are moving to new areas. They may know what they want in a neighborhood but may not know where to look. Giving users the option of selecting from a set of lifestyle criteria will result in a much better search experience.

Neighborhood boundaries are really only the tip of the iceberg. Brokerages and real estate websites have many options when they consider their website strategy. Implementing neighborhood boundaries means you must also have the appropriate neighborhood-level demographic, school and market information. Users will want to know how many single-family homes are in the area, what the crime rate may be, which schools are in the immediate area and also what some recent home sales have been. For those that do not want to implement a map search on their site they can easily tag their listings with the neighborhood and link that to the relevant content.

The advantages of allowing users to search by neighborhood are extensive. You can improve your SEO while becoming the neighborhood expert. It’s no longer acceptable to just provide basic census data at the zip level on websites. Realtor.com and Zillow, who both offer their users neighborhood level search, are the top two sites in US internet usage for the Real Estate category, according to a Hitwise February 2010 report. Combined they account for 10% of the market. The Top 20 contains a number of other sites that have one or more neighborhood features on their site, including #3 Yahoo! (profiles), #6 Trulia (Search, boundaries and profiles) and #20 Redfin (search, boundaries and profiles). Consumers are very savvy and will ultimately go elsewhere to find the information they are looking for if your site does not offer it.

Tags: neighborhood boundaries, neighborhood data, real estate mapping, real estate neighborhoods.

September 29th, 2009

Introducing MLS OneSource – The One Stop Shop for Today’s MLSs and REALTORS

By Megan Murphy, Marketing Manager

From shopping for clothes, to cars, to homes, online purchases have been growing at an exponetial rate over the past 10 years.  The Nielsen Company did a survey, which suggests that around 85% of online surfers have used the internet for shopping.  Out of those, 94% of all buyers aged 25 to 44 years used the internet to search for a home - NAR Annual Study 2008.  

With that kind of percentage of people (and climbing) utilizing the web for home search, I’d say it’s pretty important for agents to have access to the most accurate local content and innovative technology possible.

 They need engaging information on their websites and in their reports and presentations that goes beyond bed, bath, and square feet. They need access to tools that give invaluable insight into their local communities with just a few clicks. The flexibility to customize, brand and tailor their websites and sales materials to meet each of their customer/prospect’s needs. The content that increases their search engine placement and costumer engagement. They need to be a local expert, a resource, an authority on  local stats and ‘in the know’ information in order to attract, retain and drive quality lead generation.

Technology-driven tools for agents and the need for outsourced data and content used to be something that only the most tech savvy and prosperous companies were involved in. Now, especially with the economic state, it’s a ‘must have’ ‘gotta do’ business move not only to get onboard but to find the highest quality, most efficient, and most cost effective solutions possible.

We started meeting this demand roughly a decade ago when it all started, fine tuning and perfecting the art of data aggregation. Over the years we’ve made it our goal to produce the most accurate and trusted localized content to some of the most established information resources in the country; Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corporation, Century 21, NRT, Realtor.com, Long & Foster, The New York Times, WashingtonPost.com, CNN Money Magazine, and many more.

MLSs and REALTORS®  also have a major responsibility to provide their agents with easy to use tools and accurate local information and have shown an increased interest, over the the past year or so, in the solutions and services we can provide.

We decided to answer the call with our new solution, MLS OneSource.

“Creating the MLS OneSource platform was a natural progression for us. “With an influx of calls and interest stemming from the increase in pressure on agents to enhance their value proposition to consumers, it just made sense for us to formalize a platform. MLS OneSource is specifically designed to help MLSs and REALTORS® engage their consumers by providing relevant and insightful local content and easily integrated solutions that fit their individual business models.” – Marc Siden, CEO, Onboard Informatic

We are excited to launch and introduce MLS OneSource at the CMLS 2009 event this week in Lake Tahoe, California. The platform contains a suite of cutting edge products and services giving full access to our localized content for both agent portals as well as consumer-facing websites. Content categories include detailed information such as home sales, trends, school profiles with GreatSchools.net ratings, demographics, local amenities, and neighborhood boundaries.

The suite of products and solutions offered in the platform range from customizable reports and presentations, easily integrated plug and play neighborhood search tools, standardized web services, to fully tailored delivery of all Onboard’s data, providing complete control over design, development and integration. These tools play a major role in adding value to real estate websites through increasing search engine placement and customer engagement all while building credibility and quality lead generation.

Now is the time for not only real estate but all industries to realize the importance and value in innovative  web and technology solutions. The number of buyers using the internet to do their own research is only growing by the day.

Online shopping trends are showing a consistent rise due to the great response from people. In the coming years, the numbers suggesting the development of the online shopping trends are expected to rise alarmingly.

Kim Cipriano Prior, Onboard’s National Sales Director, is solely devoted to understanding and addressing the MLS sector’s unique set of needs. Kim has over 15 years in strategic business development and sales and marketing experience with 10 years specifically dedicated to the real estate industry and working with MLSs.

If you are interested in learning more about Onboard’s MLS OneSource platform, please email Kim Cipriano Prior at kprior@onboardinformatics or call 646-747-4396.

Tags: CMLS 2009, community reports, data, MLS, neighborhood data, Real Estate, realtors, school profiles, technology tools.

September 29th, 2009

America’s Best Affordable Places to Retire

By Jackie Berg, Marketing Specialist

An astounding 93% of the growth in the U.S. labor force through 2016 will be among workers over 55, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. With more Americans delaying retirement, U.S. News & World Report chose to focus on affordable destinations in the third annual Best Places to Retire list.

The 2009 Best Affordable Places to Retire, powered by Onboard Informatics demographic and economic indicators, reflects the shifting expectations of retirees. Rather than focusing on popular (and pricey) retirement hubs, U.S. News selected affordable high-value spots with great amenities. In order to make the cut, cities needed high-quality healthcare and elder-care facilities and outstanding cultural and learning programs.

The analysis didn’t stop there. The U.S. News editorial team conducted interviews with residents in the top towns to get a true picture of each city.

Tucson offers great outdoor activities and affordable housing for retiring seniors.

Realizing that retirement goals are extremely personal, the new U.S. News package also includes an interactive search tool for retirees to find towns that conform to their lifestyle needs and preferences.

The Best Places to Retire search application weighs a user’s criteria against a database of 2,000 places with populations of at least 10,000 and crime equal to or below the national average. Complete methodology is found here.

Listed alphabetically, here are the top 10 places to retire:

• Ann Arbor, Michigan
• Asheville, North Carolina
• Aurora, Colorado
• Columbia, South Carolina
• Columbus, Ohio
• Eugene, Oregon
• Fort Worth, Texas
• Jacksonville, Florida
• Kansas City, Missouri
• Tucson, Arizona

The Best Affordable Places, featured in October’s U.S. News & World Report magazine, hit newsstands today.

Tags: Best Affordable Places to Retire, Best Places, community data, neighborhood data, relocation, US News.

March 18th, 2009

What the Experts Have to Say About Data

By Megan Murphy, Marketing Manager

If you’re in the any business backed by data then you realize that regardless how strong your sales team is or how much you spend on a top notch website you’re still only as good as the quality of information you represent.

I think my mother said it best, “garbage in, garbage out”.

One our our biggest struggles, being a provider of real estate information and solutions, is explaining what data even is and the opportunity cost of using  inacurate ’free’ data.   Over the past year various experts from our company ranging from Marc Siden, our CEO to Data Project Leads, Senior Relationship Managers to our CKO & CIO, Peter Goldey, one of the industries foremost experts on data collection, aggregation and integration have put together some pretty enlightening posts regarding what this data stuff is all about.

…in more technical terms than my mother of course (no offense momma

Chicken or the Egg: Information is Data or Data is Information?

The particular interesting evolution in data has been the advent of images being allowed to stand toe-to-toe with the more traditional quantifiable data (i.e., measurements). In the past images had been lucky to be classified merely as information, but does this mean that information is more important than data? Or had data changed, and in this digital age the fine line between data and information is blurred?

Data in Real Estate (Part 1): Creating Accessibility

Friday, July 25th, 2008 Posted in Informatics | Edit | 1 Comment »

The real estate industry has been affected by the nearly infinite amount of information available through the Internet in the same way that all industries have been. Consequently it is now more important than ever that the information clients receive …

Data in Real Estate (Part 2): Creating Quality

Friday, July 25th, 2008 Posted in Informatics | Edit | 1 Comment »

Having established a foundational knowledge of data and its application to the geographic sphere of real estate, the ability to determine what sort of data will be most valuable for a company’s business ventures is even more important. In the …

Measuring the Value of Information, Part 1 – The Content

Monday, July 21st, 2008 Posted in Geography and Mapping, Informatics | Edit | No Comments »

Whenever you spend money on anything you always should ask yourself a few questions, the first one being, “Is this worth the money?” I am sure many firms consider this and many other questions before making the decision to invest …

Tags: content, data, data comparison, data provider, free data, neighborhood data, quality data, real estate data.

February 27th, 2009

CHANGES – Navigator and CoPilot Community Overview 2009

By Colleen Staunton, Product Manager

Onboard Informatics will be releasing the Community 2009 update to our CoPilot and Neighborhood Navigator products in the coming weeks. For the CoPilot reports we will be including HUD Fair Market Rents. We have added two new reports to the Community Profile in Navigator:  Smoking Ban information and HUD Fair Market Rents.

If you do not want to display these reports in your CoPilot or Navigator products please contact our Product Support team at support@onboardinformatics.com.

CoPilot

As was messaged last year, Onboard will no longer support certain debt/net worth fields. As a result the following tables will be eliminated from all CoPilot reports (both new reports and reports that were previously created and saved):

Financial Report:

Now included in all CoPilot reports is a report on Fair Market Rents:

Neighborhood Navigator

1. Smoking Ban data – This data will be provided at each geographic search level within Navigator. The data indicates whether an area has a smoking ban in place for the following:

• Workplaces
• Restaurants
• Bars

A report will look like this:

2. Fair Market Rents – These estimates will also be provided at each geographic level. Navigator will show estimates for the following:

• Studio
• One Bedroom
• Two Bedroom
• Three Bedroom
• Four Bedroom

This Fair Market Rents Report will look like this:

Onboard’s data team works diligently to estimate FMRs for our place, zip and county level data (not all counties are identified in HUDs base data). Please note that FMR values typically occur at a county or Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).

The definition of FMR from the HUD website states:

“FMRs are gross rent estimates.  They include the shelter rent plus the cost of all tenant-paid utilities, except telephones, cable or satellite television service, and internet service. HUD sets FMRs to assure that a sufficient supply of rental housing is available to program participants.  To accomplish this objective, FMRs must be both high enough to permit a selection of units and neighborhoods and low enough to serve as many low-income families as possible.  The level at which FMRs are set is expressed as a percentile point within the rent distribution of standard-quality rental housing units^[1].  The current definition used is the 40th percentile rent, the dollar amount below which 40 percent of the standard-quality rental housing units are rented^[2].  The 40th percentile rent is drawn from the distribution of rents of all units occupied by recent movers (renter households who moved to their present residence within the past 15 months).  HUD is required to ensure that FMRs exclude non-market rental housing in their computation.  Therefore, HUD excludes all units falling below a specified rent level determined from public housing rents in HUD’s program databases as likely to be either assisted housing or otherwise at a below-market rent, and units less than two years old.”

^[1] Standard-quality rental housing units have the following attributes:  Occupied rental units paying cash rent; Specified renter on 10 acres or less; With full plumbing; With full kitchen; Unit more than 2 years old, and Meals not included in rent.

^[2] FMRs were initially set at the 45^th percentile, but were reduced to the 40^th percentile, beginning with the FY1995 FMRs. The vast majority of areas remain at the 40^th percentile rent. However, certain areas are assigned the 50^th percentile rent. Fiftieth percentile FMRs were established by a rule published on October 2, 2000, that also established the eligibility criteria used to select areas that would be assigned 50th rather than the normal 40th percentile FMRs. The objective was to give PHAs a tool to assist them in de-concentrating voucher program use patterns. The three FMR area eligibility criteria were: 1. FMR Area Size: the FMR area had to have at least 100 census tracts.  2. Concentration of Affordable Units: 70 percent or fewer of the tracts with at least 10 two-bedroom units had at least 30 percent of these units with gross rents at or below the 40th percentile two-bedroom FMR; and, 3. Concentration of Participants: 25 percent or more of the tenant-based rental program participants in the FMR area resided in the 5 percent of census tracts with the largest number of program participants. The rule also specified that areas assigned 50th percentile FMRs were to be re-evaluated after three years, and that the 50th percentile rents would be rescinded unless an area has made at least a fraction of a percent progress in reducing concentration and otherwise remains eligible. (See 24 CFR 888.113.)

Tags: community information, copilot, data, HUD, neighborhood data, neighborhood navigator, Onboard Informatics.

October 14th, 2008

Neighborhood Navigator Update

By Colleen Staunton, Product Manager

As promised, we are keeping our clients and potential clients updated on all the features in the latest version of Neighborhood Navigator.  In the last post I pointed out all the features that were made available to users of the Navigator product.

We now go a step further in allowing users to customize the color of the graphs.  In addition to the base color there are eight colors available to choose from.

Current clients that have already made the transition to the new Navigator include ToledoBlade.com, Realty World, and HomeServices of America, Iowa Realty, and Prudential First Realty.  There are a number of other clients who are working on switching over.  We can’t wait to see the new Navigator up on all our client’s sites.

Tags: community data, neighborhood data, neighborhood navigator, Onboard Informatics, real estate tools, school information.

August 4th, 2008

Geo-Marketing: Possibilities

By Robert Hahn - VP, Marketing

Ooo, pretty colors!

One of the more interesting things I’ve heard at Inman SF in July was in hallways and during the Q&A of sessions. Apparently, a number of brokers are seeing an increase in foreign buyers of U.S. real estate. This is something that has been going on for a while, as this series on Inman illustrates, especially in the higher-end luxury market, but we are apparently starting to see foreign buyers spreading out of the top end luxury markets.

The response from the brokerage industry, of course, is an understandable desire to do some international marketing. If 15% of your customers are coming from Germany, it certainly makes sense to do some advertising in Berlin.

By all means, do international advertising. But while you’re at it, consider applying the same concepts to your local marketing as well.

Geo-marketing is not something that only applies to strangers from a strange land, where you are automatically thinking about where your buyers are coming from, and what you’d want to tell them in order to have them contact you. This notion can and should apply to your domestic, local clients as well.

A number of Onboard Informatics’ clients get detailed neighborhood data from us, including some of the best local neighborhood boundaries. What I’ve found a bit odd is that while our financial clients tend to use that data for internal data analysis, our real estate clients almost never do. They use neighborhoods only to enable consumer tools, such as local neighborhood search. Such hyperlocal search is a wonderful tool for consumers, so we encourage our clients to enable it. The utility of neighborhood information, however, is not limited simply to using it on your website.

With relatively simple GIS systems, a brokerage can map where their customers are coming from, especially if you have access to detailed neighborhood boundary information that can be uploaded to the GIS system. That could lead to some interesting insights.

For example, let’s say you’re a broker in suburban NJ. You know that some percentage of your buyers are coming from Manhattan, fleeing the extraordinary housing prices in the City (over $2m for a 2BR condo in June of 2008). You take your customer list over the past three or four years, and upload them into the GIS and map them to specific neighborhoods (you do have the former addresses of your clients, right?). You discover that over half of your buyer customers are hailing from downtown — specifically, Soho and Tribeca. This is shocking because you always thought of your buyers as people who work on Wall Street and live in cramped little boxes in some anonymous building in the Upper East Side.

I'm too sexy for this blog.

That insight can completely transform the way you do advertising. Perhaps instead of talking about proximity to Wall Street, you start talking about how your town is a community for artists, designers, and creative people. You update the look and feel of the ad to appeal more to the hip downtown lifestyle, instead of to the suits and power ties of the Wall Street crowd.

Even if you are in a market that doesn’t have pre-defined neighborhoods, you can apply your own knowledge of local neighborhoods to create useful geo-marketing templates. Most towns can be divided into distinct areas with their own flavor, neighborhood personality, and demographics — income, education, profession, etc. Most GIS systems will allow you to define your own ‘neighborhood area’ — then overlay it on top of the underlying data. If you know that there’s a new shopping mall going in somewhere, for example, you could make a custom neighborhood for a 5-minute drive time radius and start sending postcards to the houses in that area letting them know the value of their houses are about to go up (or maybe down, I suppose, depending on the mall and the neighborhood).

The saying that all real estate is local is true. But it is also true that all customers are local. As real estate professionals, we’re all very aware of a property’s location, characteristics, features, and so on. Many realtors are experts when it comes to their local market, and yet are novices when it comes to their customers.

So think about geography. Consider what you can do with neighborhood data, not just for your website visitors, but also for your own marketing and business operations.

(Okay, caveat time: even the simplest GIS system can be a bit of a bear to operate, while the more powerful systems require significant training. If you’re an Onboard client — please contact your Account Manager to find out about our custom GIS capabilities.)

-rsh

Tags: GIS, marketing, neighborhood data.