Smart Realtors will factor in the advantage of short driving distances

You are going to freak out when you read this. I did.

We now live in a time where paying $3.50 to $4 per gallon at the gas pump is commonplace.

Do you realize, that only two years ago, in July, 2009, the national average for gas was just $2.50 per gallon?

Only 10 years ago, the average on March 12, 2001, was a ridiculously low $1.45 gallon.

One dollar and 45 cents. That’s the price of a candy bar.

I think if gas prices hit that level again, you’ll find most Americans scrambling to fill up their pools, bathtubs and every milk container they can find.

We’ve accepted it. Gas is no longer cheap.

But for real estate brokers and agents there is a silver lining in this cloud, if you play it smart. And you use the SpatialMatch neighborhood and lifestyle search engine tool.

According to a recent survey by Coldwell Banker, 75 percent of their real estate professionals say the price of gas has influenced their clients’ choice of where they want to live.

Nearly 90% of buyers want homes closer to work. Forty-five percent are looking for homes closer to shops and services.

SpatialMatch functionality gives you a powerful tool to address this issue head on.

With the sliding distance bars, you can show prospects how far away each property is from the locations that are important to them – where they work, where their kids will go to school, where they exercise, wherever.

Every consumer today knows the price of gas is a critical part of their family budget. Make the distances from properties a critical issue with them.

First, find out the lifestyle amenities that are important to prospects. Then using the SpatialMatch map feature, illustrate each amenity and the distances to those amenities from the properties you are selling.

Take gyms for example. If someone is a gym rat, they will be making a considerable number of trips – generally every day.

That’s a tanker-load of gas. Secondly, it’s always great to remind Mr. and Mrs. Home Buyer, that the closer the amenity, the more likely they are to use it.

Getting off a couch is hard enough, but to get off a couch and drive 10 miles, well, staying home and eating a brownie soon seems like the better choice.

With SpatialMatch, and its huge database of hyper-local data and distances, you can add a whole new dimension to the home selling process.

Sure, there are plenty of homes on the market. But, essentially, by using SpatialMatch data correctly, you can create scenarios to drive home the point that a particular property is the right property to buy. Now.

Tell buyers there’s a simple way to fight the impact of rising gas prices. Live closer to what you like to do.

Here’s a link to a chart that shows the rising prices of gas in the past few years.