With mortgage interest rates still tantalizingly low, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that more Americans are thinking of a home purchase as a long-term investment where they will live for 16 years or longer. Part of that shift in mind-set involves looking at the lifestyle and behavioral aspects of living in a particular home, as well as a neighborhood’s amenities.
Matt Heimer, Senior Editor for MarketWatch, explains:
“If you’re a parent, you’re thinking about school districts. A lot of families are thinking about nearby amenities – restaurants, public transportation. And if your physical needs change [in the future], is this a neighborhood where you won’t have to drive around that much? Can you imagine growing old in this home?”
More home buyers today are considering purchasing a home that will suit them in retirement years – such as one in more walkable neighborhoods. Photo source: Marietta Daily Journal
Consumers Want Additional Details About Living in a Certain House
When conducting a property search, home buyers are asking lifestyle questions about potential properties:
- Will my kids go to a good public school if I pick this home?
- Can I easily walk from the house to coffee shops, grocery stores and schools?
- What types of people settle in this neighborhood?
- Is it a safe neighborhood for my family and my property?
- Is it near public transportation?
Maponics Context, the first-of-its-kind suite of lifestyle and behavioral analytics, is designed to answer just these sorts of questions.
Maponics Context Helpful in Online Property Search
When real estate portals and MLSs project Maponics Context datasets onto real-life boundaries such as neighborhoods, school districts and school attendance zones, home buyers get a clearer picture of what life might be like in a particular home.
Here’s how Context data addresses the questions above:
- Will my kids go to a good public school if I pick this home? – Maponics School Rankings synced with our School Boundaries (which include school districts and school attendance zones) provide statewide school performance rankings, math and reading test scores, historical rankings and school profiles.
- Can I easily walk from the house to coffee shops, grocery stores and schools? - Maponics Walkability summarizes the ease with which people can walk to leisure and amenity points of interest such as shopping centers and parks.
- What types of people settle in this neighborhood? – Maponics Context Demographics provide data attributes such as “total number of families” or “number of people who walk to work,” helping to convey the finer points of life in a particular community.
- Is it a safe neighborhood for my family and my property? - Maponics Crime Scores reveal crime levels of a particular geography weighted against the national average, broken down by Property Safety, Personal Safety and Overall Safety.
- Is it near public transportation? – Maponics Commuter Scores describe accessibility of leisure and amenity points of interest by biking, driving and public transit.
Lifestyle Data Currently Missing from MLSs, Study Finds
The 2013 Review of Top MLS Listing Sites by Clareity Consulting asserts that MLSs should offer information beyond the listings themselves to be competitive, and that few MLSs currently do so.
Here are the percentages of MLSs offering contextual data, according to Clareity’s study:
- 28% of MLSs provide neighborhood and demographic data
- 24% of MLSs offer a walk rating
- 18% of MLSs cover points of interest
- 13% of MLSs offer school performance data
- 8% of MLSs have a lifestyle search
MLSs and real estate search portals can provide this type of data by projecting Maponics Context datasets onto our real-life geographies. Contact us to find out more.