Geographic Information Systems as a tool?

[addbo]

Just wondering if anyone is or has used Geographic Information Systems as a tool for real estate investing? I know that when I was in B-School they showed off ArcView GIS and how Home Depot had used GIS information on things such as income levels, distance to transit and market share of competition to pick where to locate their next store. (Basically sandwiching a RONA store to take marketshare on both sides of a major through fare)

I was thinking if I had a personal GIS where I had information on such things as income levels, crime rates, transit, monthly rents, real estate prices it would be very visually easy to pinpoint hot locations to invest where certain criteria overlap =) Anyways I just thought it would be a neat way to do a high level filter. Unfortunately I`m not exactly adept at GIS though I do know you can get databases of things such as income levels from Stats Can to be input into a GIS... maybe can gather crime stats from municipal sources and rents and home prices you can probably do screen scrapes from places like craigslist, MLS and the like (or manually enter them yourself)

These days with technology like google maps and people overlaying information on top of it (From the MLS sites using it to show locations of real estate or even fire departments using it to map all the fire hydrants in a city)... I think it would be really amazing and very insightful to see multiple overlays of different data sets to help show trends and help pinpoint good areas to invest. (If you see a place has low crime rate, rising rents and a property that is listed at a price that meets a minimum cap rate based on avg rents in the area for that type... and you can visually just pick it out... wouldn`t that be amazing?)

If no one has done it before... maybe we can even get a group together to do some sort of group purchase of a google earth enterprise license and make it a distributed project to gather data and share results? Anyways just my pie in the sky thought of the day. What does everyone else think? Maybe everyone is already doing it...

 

[greg12]

Funny I was just thinking about something like this yesterday. I was creating a very basic filter using some Google map widgets by highlighting 800m radii around the Surrey LRTs, areas of proposed new development/infrastructure/high employment etc. I then entered the addresses of the properties I was analyzing, and it was kinda neat how most of the properties fell outside of these shaded areas. It got me thinking hmm..what other type of data can be added into this map?

As real estate investors, we need to be very sophisticated in picking the areas we invest in. There are areas whose prices/rents/vacancies/economics etc hardly ever get affected by the general market. So I am all for any tool that makes it potentially easy to figure these places out. Count me in!


QUOTE (addbo @ Aug 25 2010, 07:29 PM) Just wondering if anyone is or has used Geographic Information Systems as a tool for real estate investing? I know that when I was in B-School they showed off ArcView GIS and how Home Depot had used GIS information on things such as income levels, distance to transit and market share of competition to pick where to locate their next store. (Basically sandwiching a RONA store to take marketshare on both sides of a major through fare)

I was thinking if I had a personal GIS where I had information on such things as income levels, crime rates, transit, monthly rents, real estate prices it would be very visually easy to pinpoint hot locations to invest where certain criteria overlap =) Anyways I just thought it would be a neat way to do a high level filter. Unfortunately I`m not exactly adept at GIS though I do know you can get databases of things such as income levels from Stats Can to be input into a GIS... maybe can gather crime stats from municipal sources and rents and home prices you can probably do screen scrapes from places like craigslist, MLS and the like (or manually enter them yourself)

These days with technology like google maps and people overlaying information on top of it (From the MLS sites using it to show locations of real estate or even fire departments using it to map all the fire hydrants in a city)... I think it would be really amazing and very insightful to see multiple overlays of different data sets to help show trends and help pinpoint good areas to invest. (If you see a place has low crime rate, rising rents and a property that is listed at a price that meets a minimum cap rate based on avg rents in the area for that type... and you can visually just pick it out... wouldn`t that be amazing?)

If no one has done it before... maybe we can even get a group together to do some sort of group purchase of a google earth enterprise license and make it a distributed project to gather data and share results? Anyways just my pie in the sky thought of the day. What does everyone else think? Maybe everyone is already doing it...

 

[addbo]

I just downloaded Google Earth and it seems to have quite a bit of functionality to add stuff to it. Of course the maps and such are only saved locally... but I think you can export the data to specific files (KMZ and KML?) that can be shared...

I`ve just started playing around with adding placemarks. Thinking I could use that to start creating a list of MLS listings of interest to me... maybe create seperate folders for seperate price ranges or things like number of rooms... or maybe sq footage?

Thinking of creating another folder for rental information that can be gathered(craigslist, kiiji, newspapers)... again seperated by things like number of rooms and prices... thinking of using different colour placemarks for each of the different amounts so one can easily visually see the information. (More detailed info can be added into the description of each placemark so you can click and view exact details)

I`ve started creating "polygons" that map out good and bad areas using information I`ve been told by my property manager. (basically which areas they won`t manage I`m creating red polygons, regions they will manage in green... and transitional areas maybe in orange?)

There`s also free tools that google provides to create and publish your own layers so we could even share that way =)

http://blog.entchev.com/2008/02/18/create-...rth-layers.aspx

But this is going to take a bit of time to learn for sure. I`ll probably do some more playing with it during the weekend and maybe post my results =)

 

[greg12]

QUOTE (addbo @ Aug 25 2010, 09:21 PM) But this is going to take a bit of time to learn for sure. I`ll probably do some more playing with it during the weekend and maybe post my results =)

Good stuff. Any type of a start is always a great start. What City are you working on?

 

[addbo]

QUOTE (greg12 @ Aug 25 2010, 10:58 PM) Good stuff. Any type of a start is always a great start. What City are you working on?


Regina, SK

Guessing you`re interested in Surrey,BC? =)

 

[RCrein]

I`m based in Ottawa. The city has an electronic map with many levels of overlay to see zoning, property lines, flood lines etc. I have used it many times to answer a question myself rather than wait thru the phone tag at city hall. In combination with google sat photos the two tools work almost as a virtual tour of the exterior of a property. Quite a time savings.

QUOTE (addbo @ Aug 25 2010, 10:29 PM) Just wondering if anyone is or has used Geographic Information Systems as a tool for real estate investing? I know that when I was in B-School they showed off ArcView GIS and how Home Depot had used GIS information on things such as income levels, distance to transit and market share of competition to pick where to locate their next store. (Basically sandwiching a RONA store to take marketshare on both sides of a major through fare)

I was thinking if I had a personal GIS where I had information on such things as income levels, crime rates, transit, monthly rents, real estate prices it would be very visually easy to pinpoint hot locations to invest where certain criteria overlap =) Anyways I just thought it would be a neat way to do a high level filter. Unfortunately I`m not exactly adept at GIS though I do know you can get databases of things such as income levels from Stats Can to be input into a GIS... maybe can gather crime stats from municipal sources and rents and home prices you can probably do screen scrapes from places like craigslist, MLS and the like (or manually enter them yourself)

These days with technology like google maps and people overlaying information on top of it (From the MLS sites using it to show locations of real estate or even fire departments using it to map all the fire hydrants in a city)... I think it would be really amazing and very insightful to see multiple overlays of different data sets to help show trends and help pinpoint good areas to invest. (If you see a place has low crime rate, rising rents and a property that is listed at a price that meets a minimum cap rate based on avg rents in the area for that type... and you can visually just pick it out... wouldn`t that be amazing?)

If no one has done it before... maybe we can even get a group together to do some sort of group purchase of a google earth enterprise license and make it a distributed project to gather data and share results? Anyways just my pie in the sky thought of the day. What does everyone else think? Maybe everyone is already doing it...

 

[kir]

Hi, I`m a Geomatics specialist and can do mapping/database (at work 9-5 job). Like all tools, the cost-benefit must be assessed.
I do have the Arcview tool at home (also Mapinfo). However, I find I don`t have time to get the data and map things out.
I think it would be great for making illustrations and brochures for potential joint ventures.

A good product to look at, which sums up a lot of socio-economics by neighborhoods is the Psyte Clusters, which is a methodology described as:
" [this] segmentation system classifies Canadian neighbourhoods into mutually exclusive lifestyle groups—or ‘clusters’ based on select geodemographic metrics, location, and indicators of consumer and lifestyle behaviour".

There are lots of applications for geodemographics in real estate.

Kir.

 

[addbo]

QUOTE (kir @ Aug 30 2010, 09:42 AM) Hi, I`m a Geomatics specialist and can do mapping/database (at work 9-5 job). Like all tools, the cost-benefit must be assessed.
I do have the Arcview tool at home (also Mapinfo). However, I find I don`t have time to get the data and map things out.
I think it would be great for making illustrations and brochures for potential joint ventures.

A good product to look at, which sums up a lot of socio-economics by neighborhoods is the Psyte Clusters, which is a methodology described as:
" [this] segmentation system classifies Canadian neighbourhoods into mutually exclusive lifestyle groups—or `clusters` based on select geodemographic metrics, location, and indicators of consumer and lifestyle behaviour".

There are lots of applications for geodemographics in real estate.

Kir.

Hmm... sounds interesting. I`ve just been playing with Google Earth and it`s definitely a hassle entering individual rental listings and individual MLS listings into it... Just taking me awhile to get any real amount of info in since I was trying to colour code each placemark as well. Not sure if this will actually be worth the time it would take to enter all the data in. Still I do believe in the concept... it is amazing what can be found when representing data visually.

Also most rental listings don`t seem to have even the address... just some general area and contact info... I`d have to contact the lister to get more details... still it is interesting to see some of the data I already entered... seeing which zones have higher rents and then also which zones have more expensive real estate... now if I find a region with high rents and cheap real estate... or maybe some transition area... at least it also gives me an idea of what rents go for in the area making it easier to judge cashflow.

Anyone else investing in Regina?

 

[MonteDobson]

QUOTE (addbo @ Aug 30 2010, 10:01 PM) Hmm... sounds interesting. I`ve just been playing with Google Earth and it`s definitely a hassle entering individual rental listings and individual MLS listings into it... Just taking me awhile to get any real amount of info in since I was trying to colour code each placemark as well. Not sure if this will actually be worth the time it would take to enter all the data in. Still I do believe in the concept... it is amazing what can be found when representing data visually.

Also most rental listings don`t seem to have even the address... just some general area and contact info... I`d have to contact the lister to get more details... still it is interesting to see some of the data I already entered... seeing which zones have higher rents and then also which zones have more expensive real estate... now if I find a region with high rents and cheap real estate... or maybe some transition area... at least it also gives me an idea of what rents go for in the area making it easier to judge cashflow.

Anyone else investing in Regina?
Yes I am from Regina and invest here. Give me a shout sometime and we can meet for a coffee. Sounds like interesting stuff!

Regards,