When selling real estate, are you obeying the "law of geography?"

There seem to be a bunch of very unique laws out there. I’m not talking about regulations against speeding or stealing.

But laws concerning big ticket items – Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, or the Law of Large Numbers.

There’s one law that everybody in the real estate profession should be familiar with: The Law of Geography.

It was developed by a brilliant American-Swiss doctor of geography, Waldo Tobler (not that other Waldo, although, you could make a connection because it does involve places).

The First Law of Geography states: “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”

Now most “laws” seem to be a simple matter of common sense. Regarding gravity, yeah, what goes up, must come down. Large numbers, if you test something numerous times, you tend to get a reliable prediction of the outcome.  Duh.

The same could be said for Tobler’s treatise. But there’s something else going on here to pay attention to.

It’s how location affects the attraction of a certain home. There are many implications.

You may live in a place like New York City, with its multitude of fine restaurants and theaters, but you find yourself spending 50% of your time in that diner across the street. Sitting next to George Costanza. (see example below)

Or, a buyer who doesn’t like any of the properties you are showing, can be sold on the fact that one property is right down the street from L.A. Fitness, where in reality she will be spending a large amount of her time. And she knows it.

Or take a seller who fails to notice, and you the expert get to point out, that their property is within five miles of a baseball field, tennis court, racquetball court, jogging trail and golf course. Something that is very marketable.

This is where a tool like SpatialMatch comes into the picture.

With SpatialMatch, you can show the interconnectedness of any property with the amenities surrounding it. In a very close proximity, as low as half a mile, a few blocks.

Using the IDX functionality, a user can choose a home with their preferences – number of bedrooms, square footage, etc.

Then, with the home information still open on the screen, they can search through the enormous database of neighborhood information to see the amenities that surround the property: restaurants. hospitals, parks, schools. etc.

All this information is displayed on a map. With searches that can be saved. Emailed.

And this powerful tool resides on your real estate web site, not someone else’s. So you retain that prospect as your client. They won’t be lured somewhere else.

Tobler was born in 1930 and created a few geo-spatial tools himself. If he were active today, he  just might have created software like SpatialMatch.

For when it comes to real estate marketing, it’s smart to obey the law.

That’s Tobler’s law of geography and the importance of things close by.

To read about the “first law of geography” go here.

To read about this interesting cartographer-type fellow, click here.

For a demo on how to use SpatialMatch to market local properties, click here.