This grade school subject is critical for real estate pros today

Back in the days of our youth, most of us probably thought geography was just another one of those obscure classes, like algebra, or chemistry that we would never use in real life.

Then you grow up and you realize, whoa, maybe those teachers were right after all.

As an adult, you can’t help but see the value of geography. It influences so many items – voting, economics, conflicts, weather, farming, industry, transportation.

Where you live dictates who you will interact with, where you will earn a living, how you will raise a family.

Tony Cassidy said it well: “Geography is important because it opens our eyes; a landscape is no longer a static feature, but a complex battleground of physical and human interactions. Local is not longer local, but a collision point for the interaction of many ‘locals’ drawn from a global stage.”

Yes, he nailed it. You pump gas from the other side of the world into your car. You buy goods made in factories on the opposite side of the world.

Obviously in real estate, geography is important. But it goes beyond that old cliché about location, location, location.

It’s not just the place. It’s the interactions that take place in that place.

Where are the best schools? How do people get to work? Is the commute easy or a grind that brings them home at 7 p.m.? Is there job growth? How are the local medical facilities? Where can kids learn team sports? How can someone take a night class to further their career?

As the local real estate expert, you are in sense the local geography expert.

And as the local geography expert, it’s smart to have the best geo-related tools.

The SpatialMatch IDX and lifestyle search engine is a geo-spatial tool. When you embed it into your website, in an instant you have a tremendous hyper-local database of not only homes for sale, but where they are in relation to the geography of your market.

The map-based platform allows you to show home buyers all the relevant factors surrounding that property – where the schools are located, how many students attend the schools, the student-teacher ratios, where the community college is located, where the train station is located, the Starbucks, the yoga studio, the hospital, the parks, the golf courses.

They say people don’t just buy a home, they buy a neighborhood. You could argue they are not just buying a neighborhood; they are buying the entire geography of the area – economics, climate, education, etc.

Here’s another appropriate quote: “Geography is important because it allows us to understand the world we live in and make independent, informed decisions using this understanding.” – Paul Goodstadt.

It seems as though in these times, you can’t just take geography for granted anymore. It affects so many items – how much money people can earn, the value of their home, the opportunities for advancement.

Someone with local geographic expertise and geo-spatial tools, will have an edge and separate themselves from the pack when it comes to persuading home buyers and home sellers.

Of course, there’s the other end of the spectrum. People who have no sense of geography.

Here’s a quote from Britney Spears that illustrates this. She once said she enjoyed being famous because: “I get to go to overseas places like Canada.”

Ms. Spears would obviously make a lousy real estate professional.

For a demonstration on how easily you can add the enormous SpatialMatch database to your site and make it a geo-wonder, click here.