Big data is becoming a big part of our lives – how to get your own massive real estate database
Who is looking for homes in your market? What type of property is hot right now? Which neighborhoods seem to be getting all the attention?
Every real estate broker and agent would like to know this information and in fact in today’s age of big data, absolutely needs to know this information.
That’s why there is a great hyper-local, real estate big data tool now available that any broker or agent can embed into their site.
A Realtor might ask, what’s wrong with the way I do business now?
Nothing. But pay attention, because Big Data is a Game Changer.
Retailers use it to determine what you want to buy and when.
Sports teams use it to determine every little edge they can gain on the competition.
Airlines use it to determine the best time to offer sales on flights and the best times to raise rates.
TV shows are even using it to determine which plots lines and which characters are the most popular.
Big data is moving into every aspect of our lives. The ability to gather a massive amount of information and to interpret different behaviors from that data has made a quantum leap. Big data is going to change everything and how we do everything.
Some real estate professionals might think the sound of the phrase “Big Data” connotes images of massive data centers filled with banks of high-speed servers. Something that can only be handled by large corporations with a large number of assets and resources.
They may have the notion that this big data stuff is only something for IBM, Bank of America, Amazon, Netflix and other giants. Certainly, it’s too massive an undertaking for a lonely real estate professional like myself.
Not so. Because that is the beauty of big data technology in 2015.
In many instances, huge amounts of data are now accessible by the average business person.
Take hyper-local data. There are real estate search tools like “SpatialMatch”, “Slipstream” or Data APIs that are basically a massive big data warehouse of hundreds of layers of local data from markets all over the United States.
The company gathers school data, business listings, recent home sales, and dozens of other relevant chip-driven chunks of local information.
It also taps into the local MLS feed so it can combine all that hyper-local data with local home listings.
Then in the case of SpatialMatch for example, it integrates that data into a map, so there’s a major geo-spatial benefit (see illustration below). In essence, you can not only tell a prospect about all the amenities or schools near a property, you can SHOW them real time on a map.
With Slipstream from Home Junction, you can determine how the raw hyper-local data is displayed on your website. Customize the data the way you want to show you are truly the NEIGHBORHOOD EXPERT for any location.
As you can imagine, there is a huge amount of information that is being crunched, processed and displayed with these kinds of tools.
But the beauty of it all, is that the average real estate agent or professional can easily embed these tools and gain access to this data on their website without do any crunching of their own.
Because all the agent has to do is add a link to access the data. Basically just some lines of code. Your website is not going to gather all this information and it’s certainly not going to store all this information. These tools have the servers for that.
But, your site can DISPLAY this massive amount information in a myriad of forms to prospective home buyers and to interested sellers.
So in essence, you can conduct your own data mining. Dedicate certain pages of your website to target neighborhoods. Display school information on different pages of your website. Promote certain amenities on different pages of your website – golf courses for example or tennis courts, or parks.
Then, follow the traffic. Where are people going on your site? Are they checking out the school data? Are they mainly checking out the school data on one particular school for example?
That’s a huge signal right there. There’s an opportunity to promote more of your hyper-local information on that school. Post information on that school on your social media sites. Become the go-to real estate agent expert on that school.
Dedicate several pages on your site to that school.
Create screenshots to show where that school is located in relation to certain subdivisions.
Or show how certain properties just came on the market that are in that school district and close to that school.
That’s how the big boys operate. They do this on a national scale. You can be just as effective on a hyper-local scale.
That’s the real story about the phenomenon of big data today. It’s available on a small, personalized level for many business people. SpatialMatch, Slipstream or Data APIs are the tools you can use to be a big data player.
For more information on big data offered for small markets by SpatialMatch, click here.
SpatialMatch big data and geo-spatial real estate search tool
