Data is at the heart of every real estate decision, whether you're an investor or seller. What makes a property unique is everything from the type of flooring to the township it sits in. According to a 2019 National Association of Realtors report, school quality is the fifth most important factor in the home buying process, following neighborhood quality, convenience to jobs, affordability, and convenience to friends or family.
1 Research suggests this is not isolated to American consumers; a 2016 research study in Australia found that the four types of data profiles most relevant to prospective homebuyers were related to the property, region, educational system, and local transportation.
2 Visualizing this data is key - another study found that visitors spend 40% more time on a real estate listing page when it contains a dynamic visualization of not only the property itself but also the area around it.
3What makes visualizations so important in real estate is the ability to layer relevant information onto a map to get a comprehensive view of a property. What's important to one person is irrelevant to another, so users require the ability to toggle on or off different datasets. This differs for each and every transaction, necessitating a wide variety of data and flexibility in deployment.
For example, a business searching for a new office location may only be interested in the property details and parcel size, which can help them anticipate future costs.
They may also want to know what the environmental hazard risk associated to that property is, helping them determine insurance and upkeep costs.
A residential property search would look quite different. Of course, the physical and financial property information is just as essential as it was for the business example.
[1] 2019 Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report, (National Association of Realtors Research Group, April 2019) 36.
[2] Mingzhao Li, Zhifeng Bao, Timos Sellis, and Shi Yan, Visualization-Aided Exploration of the Real Estate Data, (Springer International Publishing, 2016).
[3] Case Study: Data Visualization Company, (Pitney Bowes, n.d.).
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Briana Brown
Pitney Bowes
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