6 Things Everyone Should Know About The Real Estate Consumer

We published a new white paper, The Demand for Better Neighborhood Information: A Consumer Perspective.

While the real estate industry has been adopting new local data solutions that attempt to provide neighborhood context, consumers have still been telling us that they are unsatisfied with the available offerings. To understand why this was the case, we conducted a series of surveys examining the types of local information consumers want. We uncovered 6 key findings about the consumer’s demand for neighborhood information that every real estate firm should know:

Finding #1: Neighborhood information is extremely important to people who are moving. In fact, 82% said the neighborhood was “as important” or “more important” than the property they were buying or renting.

Finding #2: People are going to great lengths to understand neighborhoods and 51% said lack of neighborhood information was the most difficult part of figuring out where to live.

Finding #3: People care about such a broad range of neighborhood information that most of the available solutions fall short of meeting the need. In fact, survey respondents’ preferences were distributed across all of the 26 types of neighborhood information we presented.

Finding #4: Neighborhood information preferences clearly differ between Families, Singles, and Couples, as well as between Urbanites and Suburbanites.

Finding #5: While some consumers respect real estate agents for their in-depth neighborhood knowledge, many worry that agents are biased. Only 25% of our respondents used an agent to understand neighborhoods. (We elaborate on possible responses agents can take in our paper)

Finding #6: 92% of our respondents said real estate websites should have neighborhood information and 76% said they would be more likely to use a real estate firm if they had neighborhood information on their website.

Check out the complete white paper for more in-depth stats and analysis, and feel free to pass it along.