Real Estate Market Data Helps Agents Support Buying A Home As An Investment

Real estate market data can help agents show the value of investing in a house, similar to how people evaluate a stock.

After all, a home is an investment. And anytime you do research on an investment, you need data. Statistics. Hard facts.

Not feelings.

This is especially true with today’s market conditions of low inventories. Buyers are really stretching their budgets to get into a home, if they can find a property for sale at all.

Sure, as we all know, at the end of the day, purchasing a home is very emotional. People get turned on by the beautiful kitchen or the big spacious deck overlooking the tree-filled backyard. Maybe it’s the master bedroom with the giant walk-in closets.

But there’s also that money thing. A lot of it. Thirty to fifteen years worth of monthly payments or a big chunk of hard-earned cash.

Any information a broker or agent can supply to help buyers evaluate a home as an investment is going to be a huge benefit.

That’s where real estate data companies such as Home Junction can assist.

With “big data” technology capabilities today, real estate market data aggregators are able to gather thousands of data points about properties from several sources, including public records.

This would literally be impossible for any broker or agent to do. And impossible to keep all that data current as well.

But the aggregators have that information. They can take all that data and easily peel off the hyper-local datasets that an agent wants to embed on their website for the neighborhoods they are targeting.

Real estate market data is like stock market financials

When you evaluate a stock, you need the financials. Stock price. Stock price history. Market capitalization. Revenue. Expenses. Etc.

What’s the stock price been doing these past few years? What about these past few months?

How does it compare to the stock prices of other companies in the same sector?

When you evaluate a house, you need the financials as well.

This is where real estate market data can be a tremendous help.

Using a piece of software called a Real Estate Data API (Application Programming Interface), an agent can show those financials right alongside their listings.

For example, that information can include:

• Market Trends – what has been the direction of this particular market for the past several quarters?
• Sales Activity – how many homes were sold?
• Price Trends – where have prices been going? Up? Down? Big swings or small swings?
• Details About Homes That Were Sold – including average price, median price. Etc.
• Recent Sales – integrate this data with a map and show the location of properties that were sold recently. With the price include square footage plus the number of beds and baths.

Market data helps make apple to apple comparisons

When investors evaluate stocks, they also evaluate similar companies.

Just like comparables with home prices.

Home Junction makes it easy to compare homes and neighborhoods.

They also have data to show how a property ranks in a specific neighborhood.

For example, in what percentile does the home fall into for:

• Total square footage – is the home bigger than say, 80% of other homes in the market?
• Price – where does this home fit compared to other homes in the area?
• Price per Square Foot – what about breaking the price down to square footage, a deeper way to compare properties?

As you can see, this is powerful information. This is the type of information, financials we can call them, that truly give home buyers a fact-based perspective on the investment they are about to make in a property.

Yes, real estate market data is available now on the mega-real estate portal websites.

In that case, when a consumer visits those sites, they are also led to choose certain agents. Those agents pay for those leads.

But why let the big portal websites attract those valuable buyers when a broker or agent can now offer the same real estate market data on their own websites?

Not only provide data. But agents can also use this valuable market information for their posts on social media to attract buyers. Or they can use this information in their direct mail sales letters to attract sellers.

These are tough times for home buyers. Many of them, including that huge bubble of Millennials, are first-time home buyers. On the other hand, there are many homeowners out there who are seriously wondering, “Should I be putting my home on the market?”

Market yourself as the true local resource for these people. Show them you have the data.

Cover the angle of buying a property as an investment. It’s an important one.

Any agent who supplies that type of in-depth real estate market data is going to be a real asset to both buyers and sellers.