RPR Commercial Maps: Using the Draw and Driving Tools
RPR (Realtors Property Resource) offers commercial practitioners access to a million active listings, 55 million off-market listings, and an array of data-driven reports and tools to help you advise and serve your commercial clients.
One of those tools is Commercial Maps, where you can perform powerful, geographical searches. These digital map tools can help you in conducting research, figuring out proximites, setting boundaries for areas, and determining distances from a particular point.
You can start a map search by clicking the Research menu (in the upper right navigation area) and selecting Commercial Map Insights.
Commercial Maps Drawing tools
From the RPR Map, select the pencil Draw icon to create a custom search area on the map. A new icon selection menu will expand to the left. You can choose to draw freehand or select a shape: radius, polygon or box. All the drawing tools work similarly, with each serving a different purpose:
Radius search: useful if your search involves a landmark, or a property you need proximity to
Polygon search: helpful when you have clear, linear boundaries for the area you want to search, for example a highway or river
Box search: useful for finding a potentially representative sample of properties in an area you don't know well
Freehand search: allows the most flexibility to draw your search area
Once you've drawn a shape, select Search in This Area to search for listings within your custom shape or select Conduct a Site Selection to be redirected to the site selection search with your drawn area used for the search. You can also select Create a Trade Area Report to redirect to the reports generation page, and generate a trade area report for that area.
Drive and Walk Time Search
Sometimes you'll deal with clients or investors that need information about how close or far away a specific point is, or they might need statistics on traffic counts, etc. This is where the Driving tool comes in handy. (It's the little car icon.) With it, you can access Travel Time and Distance search tools, plus Traffic Counts. Here's how to navigate Drive in the RPR Maps…
To get started, click the Driving icon (the car), then a new sub menu will be revealed. The Travel Time option uses data on traffic patterns to enable the display of approximate driving times, in average conditions. This is helpful, for instance, if a client is searching for a property no more than 15 minutes from a specific location, such as healthcare facilities, shipping ports, or a university. You can also use the travel time to create a custom Trade Area report to help promote a property, or provide your client with a better understanding of the community they're investing in.
When you select Travel Time, it's easiest to move the pin to your location, but you can also enter a complete street address. Select Next to continue.
Now you can adjust your Travel Time criteria. For example, are you looking for travel time by car or by foot? What time of day are you traveling? What day of the week and how long is the length of your journey? Select Next after applying your criteria.
A window appears showing the custom area size. Select Search in This Area to search for listings within your custom shape. Click the highlighted area again to find your custom area options. Select Conduct a Site Selection to redirect to the site selection search or select Create Trade Area Report to redirect to the reports generation page. You can delete, edit or save the areas, too.
Take the iconic pencil and car tools for a spin
RPR Maps offer layer upon layer of data for you to research and share with your clients. And the pencil and car icons (Draw and Driving tools) offer smart ways of finding solutions for commercial property buyers and sellers.
A perfect way to get started is to take a guided tour: RPR Commercial Maps Shortcut. Clicking this link will take you on an informative, step-by-step journey through the commercial map search process.
Good luck and get mapping!
To view the original article, visit the RPR blog.
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Using RPR Commercial Maps Insights to Your Advantage
If you're a commercial practitioner or a resimercial specialist, there's a lot of data for you to explore and leverage in RPR Commercial Maps. This article will cover how to use them to visually search for properties and uncover market trends.
We'll also go over how to use the RPR map to help better understand and target a Trade Area using Points of Interest, Traffic Counts and Data layers, as well as how to search for properties and create trade area reports by using any of the drawing tools. Let's get to business...
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zavvie Launches First Nationwide 'Verified Buyer Map'
Charting nearly two-dozen iBuyer, bridge, and institutional home purchasing firms in 132 markets across the U.S., real estate technology provider zavvie announced today it is launching the first nationwide "Verified Buyer Map."
"There is a misconception that sophisticated, consumer-friendly home purchasing firms are making instant cash offers are only available in a few markets around the country," said Lane Hornung, CEO and co-founder of zavvie. "The fact is that cash offers are available practically everywhere." However, homeowners who are interested in learning more about these fast, convenient home sale options don't always know where to turn — which presents an opportunity for local real estate agents and brokers.
Now with the first nationwide "Verified Buyer Map," real estate technology provider zavvie is demonstrating the wide availability of new selling options, alternatives to listing on the open market. The map is available at zavvie.com and charts nearly two dozen iBuyer, bridge and institutional home purchasing firms in 132 markets across the nation.
zavvie, the first end-to-end real estate brokerage platform offering a full spectrum of selling solutions, has partnered with leading brokerages in 40 different states to create the map. According to Hornung, zavvie initially crafted the map as "an internal tool to keep track of where all the various buyers we work with are operating."
"By putting the Verified Buyer Map on our website, we aim to bring attention to the emergence of the new types of institutional buyers offering solutions that can be a good fit for a wide range of home sellers," Hornung explained.
The Verified Buyers on the map include:
Bridge buyers that enable sellers to buy a new home before selling their current house on the open market
National retail iBuyers
Institutional buyers specializing in the purchase of properties needing renovation
All buyers on the map have been individually verified by zavvie as reliable options for home sellers seeking alternatives to listing on the open market. Compared with traditional open-market listings, zavvie notes that these mapped buyers can often be more flexible with their offers, providing sellers with faster, more certain, more convenient, and safer home sale options.
Hornung notes that the rapid growth of new buyers as an alternative to traditional listing was the impetus for creating the Verified Buyer Map. For example, the "buy before you sell" bridge programs expanded significantly in 2020 and are now available in all 50 states. iBuyers are currently operating in 34 market areas, and other institutional buyers cover practically every major real estate market across the country.
Hornung added, "We believe sellers should be able to access all their options easily; and that it is the agent's role to represent the seller, regardless of which form of selling they choose. That's why we call zavvie an 'All Options' platform."
zavvie notes that demand for its All Options platform isn't limited to the most active iBuyer markets such as Phoenix, Raleigh and Atlanta. In fact, zavvie has received the most interest in the past several months from Ohio brokerages serving markets where iBuyers aren't present and haven't announced plans to enter.
"What that tells us is that sellers in those markets are asking their agents about the new ways of selling," said Hornung, "and brokerages are transmitting that demand signal to us. Brokerages are using our platform to turn homeowners into sellers."
Using the zavvie platform, agents with zavvie partner brokerages can quickly advise their clients about selling to any verified buyers and can efficiently request offers on their behalf. When doing so, the agent earns a standard commission and preserves their relationship with the client.
"We are adding new Verified Buyers quickly in response to demand from our partner brokerages," Hornung said. "We're certainly interested in connecting with other entities that are actively purchasing properties, even in small markets."
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Google Maps: It Was Too Good to Last
Over the last 13 years, Google Maps API has been a cost-effective solution for website developers and owners, especially for those in the real estate industry, allowing the display of maps and geo-location of properties by address for a nominal fee (essentially free). Well, the easy road is over as all this is changing on July 16.
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Why Customers Care about Geocoding (and you should too!)
In the new world of real estate technology and data, local information must be accurate down to the lowest levels. It is one thing when your customers are physically visiting a property they are interested in. It is a completely different story when your customers are not only locating potential listings from a mobile or desktop application, but also reviewing comparables and points of interest (POIs) in the area. In that case, any data you display must be geocoded.
Geocoding for real estate is the process of turning an address into a set of latitude and longitude coordinates. This may seem insignificant at first, but it is important to consider the ramifications that an incorrect lat/long may have on your customers.
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Heat Maps Use Color as the Universal Communicator
Words, and especially data, get lost in the shuffle of today's sweeping onslaught of information sharing. But color is a different story. Color deepens understanding, increases retention and sparks engagement. In fact, color can increase readers' attention span by 80 percent and comprehension by as much as 73 percent.
What's more welcome about color is its adaptability to innovation. When coupled with technology, color can be used to transform complex data into a digestible, relatable and, most importantly for REALTORS®, decision-making context. Such is the case with RPR heat maps, one of the most creative and powerful technological innovations in the history of visual marketing.
For REALTORS®, heat maps unearth current market trends and historical data from up to 11 different data sets and compile them into one striking, color-coded visualization—each layer a graphical representation of a geography's home values, average sales price, flood zones, square foot values, distressed properties, and more. All presented in a way that prospects and clients understand quickly, clearly and with greater interest.
John Virden, a REALTOR® with Keller Williams Memorial Realty based in Houston, experienced first-hand how positively prospective clients react to RPR's heat maps.
"I needed to stand in for a colleague at an open house, in an unfamiliar area, so decided to use RPR heat maps to find out 'what's hot and what's not' in the neighborhood," said John. "I showed the heat map to one of the open house guests. She was so impressed, she called the next day to request a heat map of her neighborhood, and I ended up listing her house."
John recalls the guest's reaction to the heat maps: "You know, I get tons of flyers and postcards in my mailbox from REALTORS® but have never seen anything like this!"
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Choosing a Mapping or Lifestyle Search Solution
What are Mapping and Lifestyle Search Tools?
We decided to combine mapping and lifestyle search tools into a single category in our 2013 Technology Guide because they serve a similar very important purpose: enhancing real estate search. This benefits brokers and MLSs by improving user experience on their consumer-facing websites. It also benefits property searchers, who can more easily and enjoyably find the right property.
Questions to Ask
There are some important questions to ask when buying any real estate technology product and some that are unique to choosing a mapping or lifestyle search product.
First, let's look at general questions you'll want to ask.
What are my objectives for this piece of technology and will this product help me achieve those objectives?
What is my budget?
Does my MLS or Association have any agreements with any vendors that might help me obtain this product at a discount or for free?
What kind of customer service and training programs are available? Are there webinars and, if so, are they recorded so you can view them at any time? Is the vendor's online help sufficient?
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Monday Morning Mobile: Maps on Mobile
The recent release of the iPhone 5 and the fact that they have replaced Google Maps with their own proprietary mapping system has brought a lot of attention to just how important the "mapping" feature on mobile devices has become.
A recent report by comScore found that traffic to map websites on desktops has been steady now for quite a number of years, averaging between 95 to 100 million unique visitors during any month. This represents approximately 40 percent of the US population.
However, in the past six months, the number of smartphone visitors to map websites and apps has jumped 24 percent to 92 million unique visitors a month, representing 83 percent of the smartphone population which still has a ton of room for growth.
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