Lifestyle Search Engine

When Selling a Development With No Amenities, Turn to Our Lifestyle Search Engine

/in /by

It makes sense that real estate would be booming in a city that never sleeps — NYC.

Believe it or not, some experts say those insane housing prices in New York City are a bargain.

Sure, they are high, but they are not hysterically high like in Tokyo or London or Paris.

There are other factors causing the boom — super low interest rates in the US, inquiries from overseas investors and a scramble by Wall Street wonders who now apparently have more faith in real estate than in the stocks they sell.

This has caused some interesting trends, including a rush to buy now before someone else grabs it and to buy pre-construction before it’s built.

But there’s another trend that caught our eye: don’t count on amenities. Builders are scaling back on rooftop pools, bars, gyms, etc.  In this economy, high-rises are getting mean and lean. Extravagance went out the window years ago.

Now some real estate professionals will definitely see this as a downer. There’s no sizzle on this steak. No fun in the sun.

“Buyers today are more practical and are looking for value,” said Stephen Kliegerman, with Halstead Property Development Marketing.

But who wants to sell nothing more than a giant steel and concrete box? A very expensive concrete box at that.

Savvy brokers and agents can turn this around with a tool like SpatialMatch, the lifestyle search engine combined with a robust IDX.

SpatialMatch has an enormous database of millions of businesses. You can designate any business in relation to distance away from any property. You can easily illustrate these businesses on a colorful map, surrounded by icons for Homes (IDX), Lifestyle, Value, Areas, Favorites, and Alerts.

So, Mr. Buyer likes to swim. With SpatialMatch’s lifestyle search engine, you find a pool so close to the property, he can practically walk there in his bathrobe.

Mrs. Buyer likes to go to the gym twice a week. Well, we don’t have a gym in the building. (That’s actually a plus, Mrs. Buyer, since you don’t have to pay for it in your common area fees for ALL the other days you and your fellow condo owners are not there.)

With SpatialMatch, you can show her a few quality gyms nearby. You can walk to them in your sneakers and start working out before you even break a sweat getting there.

(See our example of Fitness Centers in mid-Manhattan below).

You don’t have to be in NYC to provide this information to buyers. Or show sellers how you will use it to market their property. You can do it in Peoria as well.

You can make any property more desirable. You can add amenities to any location. With SpatialMatch, you can put that sizzle on any steak.

To read the article about the boom in NYC, click here.

To test drive the SpatialMatch lifestyle search engine in action, click here.

 

Market Real Estate

How to Market Real Estate With School Data

/in /by

I was speaking with an acquaintance of mine the other day and was surprised to hear he recently moved to the other side of the country.

“Yea, we like the schools here better.  We were considering a private school where we lived before but thought it would smarter to just relocate.”

2,000 miles!

That’s quite a leap.

Now I know he didn’t just move 2,000 miles for the schools, but our conversation kept nagging at me and I would not be surprised if it was 80% of the reason why he hauled his wife and two kids more than halfway across the country.

Every Realtor knows schools are a big issue with home buyers. But in this increasingly competitive day and age, it’s no secret that issue is getting more intense.

So, what have you done to increase the intensity of school information you can provide to prospects? Do you know how to market real estate in relation to schools?

I looked at a few real estate sites, and yes, they had school-related information on their site. And that school information consisted of a list. School names and addresses.

A list? This is the era of the iPhone, Google and Facebook. A time when you can be sitting at a Starbucks with your smart phone and can access all the information in the world.

And some real estate web sites just post a list. That’s it.

There is a huge opportunity to market real estate that’s being missed here.

What if your website had this school information instead:

  • a map pointing out the location of schools, public and private, in relation to any property under consideration.
  • sliding distance circles allowing you to determine how far away each school is from a certain property.
  • data on the number of teachers.
  • the number of students.
  • enrollment of students per grade.
  • ratio of male/female students.
  • enrollment by ethnicity.
  • school lunch information.
  • school district boundaries.

And what if your site could provide this data in an interactive search engine?

Integrated with a robust IDX real estate system that lets you research homes along with this critical school information.

Where you could save and email the results.

SpatialMatch is a tool that provides an IDX and Lifestyle database that can be embedded directly onto your site. Your valuable prospects don’t need to go wandering on the web to find this information. You’ve got it.

And when you approach sellers, when you show them how you are going to market their properties, you can point out to them how you are going to position their listing as an ideal property in terms of addressing the educational needs of buyers. In terms of distance, public and private schools, detailed information about those schools, etc.

This is how you market real estate in today’s world.

This is how you educate home buyers and sellers on one of the most pressing concerns of the day.

See an example below of how schools can be indicated on a SpatialMatch search platform for any neighborhood.

For a demo or more information on how you can immediately add this enormous educational database to your site, call 858-224-3535 or click here.

Home Ownership

‘Tis the Season for Realtors to Take Pride in the Service They Provide

/in /by

As families gather in their homes for the holidays, if you are a real estate professional, you’ve got to have some feeling of pride knowing you found the right home for many of these families.

Many times in our professional lives we get caught up in the numbers — how many sales, how many listings, the amount of the sale, the amount of the commission.

But now that the holidays are here, reflect for a moment on what you are selling and the ample benefits of home ownership — a place where families gather to celebrate, well, just being families.

So be proud of your role as a real estate professional in getting people into the right property. It truly is a beautiful thing.

We’ve been involved in the business long enough to know the real estate business is not an easy one. That’s why we create tools to make your jobs easier.

Providing a home in the right community for a family, where kids can play, one can mingle with their neighbors, good schools are nearby, and it’s pleasant to go downtown for a cup of coffee, should bring a sense of satisfaction to any broker or agent.

At a HUD hearing, former US Senator Elizabeth Dole once said: “The benefits of home ownership for families, communities and the nation are profound. When individuals and families own their home, they establish roots in their communities and have a great stake in the growth, safety and development of their towns and cities.”

She went on to add: “It is through initiatives to further grow home ownership that we empower individuals and families by helping them build wealth and improve their lives.”

So when you drive down the street these next few days and see all those homes filled with families enjoying  themselves, take a second to enjoy the part you played in making it all happen.

The staff at Home Junction would like to wish everybody a Happy (and fulfilling) Holiday Season!

Lifestyle Search Technologyg

Real Estate Broker Calls SpatialMatch His ‘Magic Map’

/in /by

Everyone in business knows you don’t always get feedback from a satisfied customer. Many times they are just too busy.

But when one of your clients refers to your product as “magic,” well, you just gotta listen.

That’s what happened at Team X Real Estate in Los Angeles.

Broker Emmanuel Xuereb wrote in his blog that he has added the SpatialMatch IDX and lifestyle search engine to his website.

It is “the most incredible new technology for searching properties,” Emmanuel writes. “And we are the first in Los Angeles to implement it on our site.”

Now, we know LA is a hot market for real estate and with any hot market comes competition.

Team X is obviously going about the market in the right way by adding this enormous database of home listings combined with billions of bits of real estate data on local businesses, schools, community facilities and other amenities.

All this real estate data is crunched together into a user-friendly visual display on a map. So in essence, you can not only show a buyer information about a home, but at the same time you can show them places in the neighborhood that appeal to their lifestyle preferences. And in LA, we imagine customers are very particular about where they live.

“This is the same advancement as when the iPhone came out, changing phones forever,” Emmanuel said.

Comparing SpatialMatch to the iPhone? Sure, we’ll take a compliment like that any day of the week.

“You will not find a more accurate and extremely convenient and easy search for properties anywhere,” Emmanuel states. “No need to find the different web sites for all your searches any more. It’s all in one place now.”

Team X recently redesigned their website, and to add to the pizzazz of introducing a new site, they smartly added the new SpatialMatch IDX/lifestyle search technology.

Companies change sites all the time, but consumers want to know what’s in it for them. So adding a new feature is critical to any redesign.

The Team X site is sharp, with some incredible images of properties that can be expanded to fill the browser. In addition, they have tabs for “Culture” and “Surf Reports,” to keep them in tune with their local community.

Like Apple computers, Team X is anticipating the needs of their customers before most people even think about it.

You can check out their website here – www.teamXrealestate.com.

Here’s the full blog that Emmanuel wrote.

How to Position Your Market Area

How to Position Your Market Area As a Candidate for the List of “Great Neighborhoods”

/in /by

If you watch the hit NBC show, Parks and Recreation, you probably cringe every time Leslie Knopes declares the city of Pawnee to be the best place to live in the USA.

I mean, come on, their website suggests you go check out the tree that fell on Plymouth Road because it… looks like a crocodile.

In fact, they are going to leave it there for a week so all the townspeople can get a chance to experience the “tree-o-dile.”

If that’s not enough, one of the most popular celebrities in the town is a dead miniature horse.

Of course, in reality, the fictional Pawnee would probably not make the list of the “10 Best Neighborhoods” recently announced by the American Planning Association.

But your neighborhood probably wouldn’t make it either.

Don’t despair. We have the answer for how to position your market area. It’s SpatialMatch—our map-based lifestyle search engine that helps you transform any neighborhood into a winner.

If you are like me, you are always suspect of these “Best Places to Live” lists. They act like these locales are something special because they have great bike paths, a cool micro-brew pub downtown and maybe a neat place to rock-climb nearby.

The truth of the matter is that nearly every town in America has fantastic qualities. Every town has a place where people gather, perhaps a nice park with shade trees and benches.

And which town does not have a historic building? They all do. Cool architecture – there’s  got to be a building somewhere in your area that is unique with lots of character.

Landmarks, heck, even a big ball of twine attracts visitors.

Here’s some other criteria used by the APA to determine a “Great Neighborhood”:

  1. Has a variety of functional attributes that contribute to a resident’s day-to-day living (i.e. residential, commercial, or mixed-uses).
  2. Accommodates multi-modal transportation (i.e. pedestrians, bicyclists, drivers).
  3. Has design and architectural features that are visually interesting.
  4. Encourages human contact and social activities.
  5. Promotes community involvement and maintains a secure environment.
  6. Promotes sustainability and responds to climatic demands.
  7. Has a memorable character.

Lots of room for interpretation there.

Where does the SpatialMatch tool come in when it comes to how to position your market area? Well, you can create a visual representation on SpatialMatch showing all the great characteristics of your particular neighborhood near the properties you are selling.

Using the lifestyle search features, you can show the locations of the best parks, historic buildings, interesting landmarks, highest-rated restaurants and popular community centers.

In essence, use this 21st century technology embedded on your website to build your own best neighborhood.

Call it, (Your Town’s) “Great Neighborhood Features.”

Post a link on your web site. People will check it out.

Post a link on your Facebook page – your neighbors (and potential clients) will appreciate your act of civic pride.

Tweet it.

Email the link to relocation prospects – let them know you will help them overcome their anxiety of moving to a new area by pointing out all the lifestyle amenities that exist there.

Promote it to potential sellers. Show them you have the resources (SpatialMatch) to position their home and their neighborhood as the place to be.

Don’t let these “Best Places” lists get the best of you.

Using SpatialMatch’s extensive database, just like Leslie does for Pawnee, create an aura for your town that shows your area deserves to be at the top of any list and that you know how to position your market area.

For a link to the ANA “Great Places” page and the factors they use, click here.

For a demo of how SpatialMatch can make you the best broker or agent in your town, click here.

Quality Content

Here’s How SpatialMatch Will Add Quality Content to Your Real Estate Website

/in /by

You may have noticed a while ago how your searches on Google were starting to produce an inordinate amount of sites that were not exactly what you were searching for. Site that were lacking in good, quality content

Instead of real estate information, you found bogus pages with nothing but Google links on them.

While the folks at Google had come up with a clever and revolutionary way to organize the web and help people find what they were looking for, there were plenty of folks who found a clever way to game the system and literally cheat their way to the top.

Don’t think the geniuses at Google didn’t notice this.

That’s why Google recently announced major changes in their algorithmic settings (that’s a mouthful), code-named “Panda” (that’s easier to remember).

And that’s why a content-generating lifestyle search tool that creates relevant content resulting in long user sessions, such as SpatialMatch, is very valuable to a Realtor.

Don’t worry, legitimate broker and agent sites are not in Google’s crosshairs. It’s the sites that are mainly designed to get high rankings or back-links but offer no real value at all.

Google engineers wrote “This update (in Panda) is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

There’s no arguing, with its millions of home listings, businesses, schools, parks and other community amenities, SpatialMatch provides useful information.

But there’s more. Google also watches to see if that content is “sticky,” meaning, how long do visitors stay on the site and read that content.

Wall Street Journal writer Amir Efrati stated that Google “did say that the company added numerous ‘signals,’ or factors it would incorporate into its algorithm for ranking sites. Among those signals are ‘how users interact with’ a site.”

Our own records show searching for a property, or business or other lifestyle amenity on the SpatialMatch tool embedded on a Realtor’s site can be very sticky.

According to our data, average time of use for a registered visitor is nearly 25 minutes. That’s huge, considering most people look at a web page for 3 seconds.

In essence, once you get home buyers’ hands on SpatialMatch, they’re off and running and having fun finding the ideal location for them. Or, you as a broker or agent, can have fun showing them how great that property is looking because not only is it a great house, but it’s also just down the street from a golf course/gym/Starbucks _____________ (fill in the blank).

When they find SpatialMatch useful, they are also more likely to come back, which results in repeat visitors, another important metric.

And, saving pages on SpatialMatch and then sending links out to those pages results in those very valuable back-links that Google still uses to determine the popularity of a site.

You probably heard the old saying, “Content is king on the web.” Well, some people apparently had a very loose definition of what exactly defines content.

So they got slapped hard, and now the new saying is “Quality content is king.”

With the right tools such as a SpatialMatch, you will create your own quality content that both visitors and Google spider-bots will appreciate.

And you’ll distance yourself from those poor saps who tried to fool the world’s smartest search engine.

 

Here’s a valuable article from SEO Theory explaining Panda in-depth.

For a demo of SpatialMatch, click here.

Walkability

How Realtors Can Cash In on the “Walkability” Craze

/in /by

The term “walkability” is a hot new buzzword in real estate circles.

Most of you have a rough idea of what it means just by the word itself. But walkability involves more than just putting one foot in front of the other.

Basically, the term concerns how-user friendly a certain part of a community is designed. It asks the basic question: how easy is it for people to not only walk but shop, visit, mingle, enjoy or spend time in an environment? How “pedestrian” is it?

Factors to consider include sidewalks, bicycle paths, traffic, road conditions, safety and distances between amenities like stores, cafes, restaurants, parking.

You can dig even deeper and start talking about street designs, shade, benches, planters.

By now, you get the picture.

The beauty of walkability for real estate brokers and agents is that you can create your own “Walkability Match” and it’s very inexpensive to do.

You can basically use this pedestrian-friendly factor to add to the selling potential of a home. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than asking a seller to paint the interior, add a wine cellar or resurface the driveway.

SpatialMatch, the map-based lifestyle search engine, is the perfect tool for you to create your own walkability promotions on your own web site.

For example, SpatialMatch has a distance slider feature that measures the distance away from any location in a radius circle. This feature creates the distance circumference of any amenity in the Lifestyle categories, such as Dining, Shopping, Community, Entertainment, Personal Services, Health and Medical, Finance, Transportation, Hotels and Travel.

Each of those headings has several sub-categories such as bookstores, hair salons, Italian restaurants, etc. All pulled from a gigantic database of millions of businesses. You can even add your own Custom Locations of unique amenities that you know are important to your customers.

Since the rule of thumb is that 1/20 of a mile is considered the distance of a basic city block, SpatialMatch conveniently has distance data from all over the United States down to that level — one city block.

“Walkability” has a nice ring to it. In this day and age, who doesn’t want to promote getting out and about without your car? With gas at nearly $4 a gallon, count us in. So why not use this in your promotional materials?

Here’s an example below of how you can easily illustrate walkability with SpatialMatch:

We took an area of Santa Monica, CA, and indicated the locations of four popular spots: coffee shops, bookstores, day spas and parking lots/garages. Then we chose a distance circle of 1/20 of a mile, or a city block.

This took us only five minutes.

That’s a small investment of a time considering how a Realtor can add an appealing “walkability” factor to increase the value of a property in the eyes of just about any buyer with two legs, two feet and a pair of sneakers.

And your seller isn’t going to walk away from you either when he or she can see how you are marketing their property.

Here’s a good overview of walkability on Wikipedia.

To create your own walkability scenario, go to the SpatialMatch demo here.

 

Family Oriented

How SpatialMatch Can Give Nearly Any Property a Family Oriented Community Location

/in /by

There is probably no more appealing phrase to a person looking to buy a house than “family-friendly community.” It just has a nice, wholesome ring to it, doesn’t it?

A Florida newspaper went so far as to promote a package of ten “family-friendly communities” to help builders stir up some sales.

Here’s a paragraph describing one of the properties:

“With homes starting from the $260’s, families will feel as if they are on a year-round South Florida vacation at ________ by __________. There will be plenty of places for adults and children to play, including an 8,000 square-foot clubhouse featuring an indoor sports complex, arcade, cardio/fitness center, yoga/exercise studio, social hall with catering kitchen and children’s activity center. Outside, families will enjoy a resort style swimming pool, kids splash ‘n’ play area, basketball court, sports field, walking/jogging paths and lighted tennis courts.”

Sounds great. True lifestyle marketing.

But wait a minute? Why can’t you as a broker or agent create your own custom-designed family-friendly community?

Using a lifestyle search engine tool like SpatialMatch, you could literally take almost any property listed with you, or find out the lifestyle preferences of any home buyer, and create a scenario for a family-friendly community.

Take Property XYZ for example. Now let’s use the amenities shown in the development above.

With the SpatialMatch interactive map embedded on your site, you can illustrate where the nearest family-friendly community gyms like LA Fitness or the YMCA are located. These are huge sports facilities for all ages.

What about a community swimming pool or, even better, one of those parks with all the slides and tubing rivers? How cool is that to a kid! Point that out on the SpatialMatch screen, with a distance circle showing the proximity to Property XYZ.

Basketball courts? Got them nearby at the local middle school.

Sports fields? There’s a little league ballpark down the street.

Tennis courts? There’s a municipal tennis area with eight lighted courts at this park within a mile of the property.

Jogging/running trails?  This park has that too, as well as this park over here and that park over there.

Wow, with just a few clicks on SpatialMatch, you have made property XYZ an awesome “family-friendly location.”

Home buyers with families (or a family on the way) are going to love that.

When you show this to sellers, they are going to drool over this new hi-tech way you will be promoting their property.

Nobody’s got a monopoly on “family-friendly.”

And it’s the smart broker or agent who is certainly going to package properties that way, just like a major newspaper.

Here’s a link to the Palm Beach Post and their “family-friendly” promotion.

Lifestyle Amenities

This Year’s Top Real Estate Movie Award Goes To….

/in /by

Isn’t great to see a low-budget film make it big?

Independent movies like “Little Miss Sunshine” or “Sideways.”

Movies that don’t have overpaid movies stars and cost a gazillion to make and make you wonder after two hours, wouldn’t all that money have been better spent, say, rebuilding a country.

Our nomination for independent Real Estate Movie of the Year has to go Mark Richert’s film titled “I Want to Live Near a Starbucks.”

It’s only 2:13 minutes long. But it touches the lives of nearly every American and helps them with a quest they face every day: getting their cup of Starbucks coffee!

Okay, so maybe it’s not “Gone with the Wind” or “Platoon.”

But if you are a lover of Starbuck’s coffee, it’s going to resonate with you.

Mark’s real estate firm, Finding Homes for You in Chesterfield, MO., recently added the SpatialMatch neighborhood and lifestyle search engine to their website.

Smart move. It gives his company a huge database of hyper-local information for his target market area in St. Louis.

The platform gives him a plethora of information in regard to schools, local businesses, community amenities etc., and it gives his customers a way to search for homes in relation to the lifestyle amenities that are important to them.

Those lifestyle amenities might include libraries, gyms and golf courses. But Mark knows one of the most important lifestyle needs of all is that morning cup of coffee.

So he produced a video showing how to use SpatialMatch to find that Starbucks cup of coffee. And with our IDX feed, how to also review homes for sale located near a Starbucks.

His point isn’t just to show you how to find a Starbucks. But how to find any lifestyle amenity you want and how you can look at the details, photographs and other relevant information about properties for sale, all on a convenient map.

“The possibilities are endless,” Mark said. “This really allows you to set up your search based on your lifestyle.”

Like we said, Mark’s a smart guy. Check out the other technologies he promotes, like mobile search and the “Finding Homes for You” own channel on YouTube.

And yes, he’s sharp enough to know he needed to create a sequel, so he did: “St. Louis Homes for Sales by School.”

To watch the video “I Want to Live Near a Starbucks” click here.

Here’s the link to Mark’s website, www.FindingHomesforYou.com.

How To Become A Local Real Estate Expert

Learn How SpatialMatch Can Help You How to Become a Local Real Estate Expert

/in /by

If anything is apparent today, it is that nothing stays the same. Look at search engines. Remember Alta Vista? Lycos? Yahoo as the place to start searching on the web.

Not any more. While technology is providing us with incredible devices, it also has a nasty edge to it. It disrupts the status quo.

This is very evident with the real estate profession. The experts are already warning about a changing tide.

Internet marketing guru Seth Godin put it very bluntly in an infamous, oft-quoted blog that made many brokers and agents cringe: “Advice for real estate agents (quit now).”

(For all your real estate bloggers, note his shocker of a headline.)

What he really is saying is that the old days of driving people around and “taking orders” are over. Agents have to be more savvy in today’s marketplace.

One way is to “micro-specialize.”

He writes: “The first (step) is to become the expert in what you do. Which means micro-specialization. Who is the the single-best agent for condos in your zip code? Or for single-family homes for large families? Who is the one and the only best person to turn to if you’re looking for investment property in this part of town?”

Ok, thanks Seth.

Now the problem I have with advice from experts is that it is easy for them to sit in their Herman-Miller chair with a Starbucks chocolate latte and tell the rest of the world all the things they should be doing.

Sure, call every client who bought from you every six months (few do this). Or blog three times a day. Or Twitter five times every hour.

While many real estate mega-sites have lots of resources, there is a way technology can help you as an individual agent. Take SpatialMatch’s neighborhood and lifestyle search engine.

“When we created SpatialMatch, we thought to ourselves, ‘how can an agent demonstrate an expertise in a particular lifestyle niche?’ We wanted to create an intuitive and dynamic platform that provided all the information they needed right at their fingertips,” said John Perkins, CEO of Home Junction Inc., creators of SpatialMatch. “And with our customization, they can interact with any relevant lifestyle locations that they want to highlight.”

Say for example you want to be the hyperlocal real estate expert, or micro-specialist as Godin suggests, in a particular niche.

That’s a lot of work. But when you embed the SpatialMatch search platform into your site, you are immediately loading a map with all the local schools, businesses, community amenities and tons of other data right onto your site.

From there, you can use that data to pick the niche you want to specialize in. Tell prospects you are the “lifestyle expert.” Pick a few lifestyle needs that seem to be prevalent with your buyers — golfers, yoga enthusiasts, runners, middle school parents, etc.

Add an IDX feed with current homes listings so for whatever hyperlocal real estate niche you plan to dominate, you can show the relevant homes listings that go with that niche right on the same page.

Now rather than going out and digging up all that local data, piece by piece. You have it. You are the hyperlocal real estate expert, and your website is the proxy demonstrating your knowledge. Sure, Seth Godin can tell you all the things you need to do. But SpatialMatch gives you the tools to do it! Fast.

To learn more about SpatialMatch, click here.

Twitter For Real Estate

Let’s Give Them Something to Tweet About

/in /by

Everyone knows that famous Bonnie Raitt song “Let’s give them something to talk about.”

For real estate brokers and agents in 2011, it should be “Let’s give them something to Tweet about.”

Yes, a site that amazingly only allows you to write 140-word messages at a time continues to skyrocket in popularity.

How popular you might ask? Well, the Wall Street Journal estimates Twitter, with revenues of $45 million last year, might be worth $8 to $10 billion.

Google and Facebook are reportedly sniffing around to get them to sell.

But oh no. Not for a measly $10 billion. The Twitter founders want to build the micro-blog into a $100 billion company.

If they are planning to grow Twitter into that size company, you might start planning to get better at using Twitter for real estate if you are going to be a major player in your marketplace.

Hopefully by now, you realize “this is what I ate for lunch” won’t cut it.

You want to establish yourself as the hyper-local expert. You want to be the one that gets followed.

Here are a few ways SpatialMatch’s map-based, lifestyle search engine technology can help you get the edge on utilizing Twitter for real estate:

  • Tweet listings with locations: every real estate agent is posting new home listings on Twitter. It just makes sense. But they all seem the same after a while. Why not do something different? Using SpatialMatch, when you list a property for sale, start with where they are located. If the home is next to the train station, or a great golf course, or a popular school, you can show that right on the SpatialMatch map with a radius circle indicating the distance. Powerful stuff.
  • Tweet new businesses: you want to establish yourself as the hyper-local expert. So when a new business opens up, say a gym with a climbing wall, you have the ability with SpatialMatch to add a custom description and picture to a local map. Wow, that’s makes you the high-tech hyper-local expert.
  • Tweet what’s sold and what’s available nearby: you don’t just have to show active listings. You can tweet properties that are sold. People pay attention when any type of transaction occurs. With SpatialMatch, you have the ability, again using a map, to show other similar properties nearby that are still for sale. And you can point out a few reasons why the property sold, for example, that train station down the street. This tells a potential buyer: get up off your butt and make an offer ASAP.

Bonnie has a phrase in her famous song: “People are talking, talking about people.”

If you want to successfully use Twitter for real estate, use SpatialMatch so your song will be “Tweeple are talking, talking about YOU.”

To see or sign up for a demo, go here.

Real Estate Customization

Real Estate Customization Organizes the Home Search Chaos and Keeps Consumers Returning

/in /by

The real estate industry is clearly lagging behind other industries in customization possibilities for “real estate search and display.” Think about it.

On the web you can customize everything — your song playlist, your favorite videos, your bookmarks, your news, your friends… the list goes on.

Customization exists in order to recognize individualism and make things personalized and relevant to each person.

But to date, only the search process itself has been customizable, and even then, only on select websites.

With that in mind, think about the current trends to give the consumer more and more data.

It’s not just the house. It’s also the neighborhood, the schools, the parks, the commute to work, the places of worship, and so much more.

In the absence of real estate customization, there is simply too much information out there for a person to handle. Real estate customization is a necessity.

The programmers at SpatialMatch decided to tackle this challenge by adding a “Favorites” feature to its powerful lifestyle and IDX search engine tool (that embeds directly into an agent’s website).

Take a look at the screen shot below: Jane is looking for a home near La Jolla CA. It’s hard for her to decide which one she likes the best. She picks three potential listings.

To help her narrow her search, she also researches four lifestyle needs that are important to her: an elementary school, a gym, a hair salon, and a coffee joint.

Using SpatialMatch, she finds four locations that fit the bill: Allesandros Salon, a 24-Hour Fitness facility, La Jolla Elementary School, and Café Mojoe.

With the new “Favorites” feature – Jane can save all of these locations on the user-friendly map. When she pulls them back up, they appear with brightly pulsating sonar circles.

Equally important, if Jane were comparing neighborhoods and looking for the same amenities “in any area,” she can save the entire search and apply it to any location.

Seems easy? It is. What’s important is the context regarding the volume of information in the background. The lifestyle database that Jane was easily foraging through contains a massive amount of data — 60 million homes, 12+ million business, 130,000 schools and countless other databases.

“It’s become nearly impossible for consumers to digest so much information in the short time they are on a Realtor’s website, and that’s why we added a real estate customization feature for ‘my saved searches,’” said John Perkins, CEO of Home Junction Inc, which developed the platform. “There are a tremendous amount of factors that are critical in the selection of the right property. We wanted to give brokers and agents a way to show buyers how to sift through all this information and then save it and then edit it or reapply it, anywhere, anytime.

This functionality also has the major benefit of capturing that consumer and their activity as a lead.

How? Well, when users come to the site and create a custom “Favorites List” or a custom “Saved Search,” they must register first.

CaChing! That’s a solid, highly qualified lead waiting for you. Soon, the detailed criterion attached to the customization will be a part of the information passed to the agent with the lead.

“There’s no other real estate customization tool like this on the web today,” Perkins added. “And when an agent has this technology on their site, it puts them years ahead of the rest of the industry in a variety of ways.”

Sure, your website might have a bunch of information. But when that information can be tailored to fit particular needs, then that’s something special. That’s something that stands out in the highly saturated real estate industry.

(To try this for yourself, go to the SpatialMatch demo here and click on the “Favorite” icon on the right side of the page.).