Neighborhood 2.0 – What does the Future Entail?

January 28, 2008
By: Drew Meyers
Author's Website: http://www.zillow.com

There’s an interesting post at webmapper that’s probably worth reading, especially if you are a techy interested in real estate – Neighbo(u)rhood 2.0

The new services and products launched by Urban Mapping, Zillow, and the Dutch CBS in the first weeks of January may herald a new trend that affects online mapping: Neighbourhood 2.0. It does not only mark a shift from the global to the local, but also a further step in the democratisation of cartography: opening up neighbourhood data to both the (GIS) specialist and the (map reading) end-user.

The future of neighborhood information as it relates to real estate in the United States is certainly an interesting topic to ponder. Are neighborhoods the right size area for mapping purposes, or do you think home buyers will start demanding maps and data on smaller areas such as HOA’s? Will the web end up with one standard set of neighborhood boundary lines or are neighborhoods too fuzzy for people to agree on? Will real estate agents begin populating their sites with neighborhood data or will FHA rules scare them away? Besides demographic and home value data, what other datasets would be useful at the neighborhood level?

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Tijn

Check out our BETA heatmaps (http://next.funda.nl/heatmaps). Some of the DATA is CBS data...

Mark

Drew,

Very interesting discussions about how useful this information will be to certain geographic locations of the US. Neighborhoods by definition can roughly be defined as a geographically localised community located within a larger city, town or suburb. In areas where neighborhoods do not have an official status, questions can arise as to where one neighborhood begins and another ends. Many cities may use districts and wards as official divisions of the city, rather than traditional neighborhood boundaries. Where I came from (Pennsylvania) we had municipal level neighborhoods and wards. Now comes the question of how a "neighborhood is defined today? In new areas we now have subdivisions or housing developments, or some developers are even calling them communities. After moving to the South two years ago, I stumbled upon a problem that has led into a huge project for me and the development of a company that I just started called thecitycompass.com. The focus of our data (GIS format) is at a very detailed "neighborhood" level. Our data goes well beyond demographics, and housing information. An example of this is the associated amenity database. Lots of work! My vision after learning about zillow has been to reinvent the wheel (specific housing search, but to focus more globally (down to neighborhood only) and then pass off to other sites...i.e. zillow and realtors. Just another way for to compliment what is already out there.

-Mark
thecitycompass.com

Mark

Ooops! Let me correct a sentence in my post. I left our the my vision after learning about zillow has been to NOT reinvent the wheel.

-Mark
thecitycompass.com

Real Estate Chocolate - Ridgef

Intersting evolution of GIS data and application. Quick question: how would FHA rules would impact disclosure of neighborhood data? Thanks.