Royal LePage zones in on buyer lifestyles with Local Logic
Real estate is about more than market statistics today. It’s about lifestyle—something that Carolyn Cheng, chief operating officer at Royal LePage, has zoned in on by using Local Logic to take a snapshot of neighborhood lifestyle information and datasets as a way to stay ahead of the competition.
“Since the advent of real estate websites back in the mid-’90s, real estate search has been done in a fairly standard way: It starts with a location search that can then be filtered by price and property attributes,” says Cheng. “Most homebuyers, however, also want to inform their home-buying decisions with neighborhood and lifestyle information.”
Why should lifestyle-related information be the primary focus within the real estate space?
“Today, companies are using machine learning to aggregate and analyze large datasets in this space, and Royal LePage made it a priority to be a leader in providing lifestyle and neighborhood information in a way that’s both useful and engaging,” says Cheng.
Data that not only provides essential property information, but also ensures that buyers’ choices and behaviors align with a future home and neighborhood, can be the most valuable part of a transaction—and for Royal LePage, the results are crystal clear.
“We can tell that the consumer is engaged with this new information as lead volumes in our test cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have increased by 36 percent, while consumers are submitting leads three times faster than before,” says Cheng.
“The data is hyperlocal, meaning that the green/quiet scores may differ from one corner to the next depending on proximity to parks, nightlife or major thoroughfares. This is information that the homebuyer wants to know—and it’s even quantitative,” adds Cheng. “Much like Walk Score, there are scores for amenities available and neighborhood attributes, so the information is very easy to understand.”
Royal LePage’s goal for this data? Getting into the local details, but on a national level.
“Local Logic solved this problem for us as they’ve done the legwork in compiling and normalizing many disparate datasets from all over the country, regularly updating the data. This would be a difficult task for us to do internally, and Local Logic accelerated our progress on this front,” says Cheng.
Even in Local Logic’s pilot stages, Cheng never felt insecure about the data’s validity. In fact, the products have been so successful that Royal LePage continues to focus on lifestyle by implementing new Local Logic features.
“Royal LePage was amongst the first companies to implement Local Logic’s neighborhood widget, as well as the first to pilot its Local Profiles of rich neighborhood information. Recently, we were also the first company to pilot their lifestyle match feature,” says Cheng. “This feature works much like an online dating site. Once you pick the amenities and neighborhood attributes that are important to you, property search results are given a score, so consumers can hone in quickly on the homes that best fit them.”
What excites Cheng the most is Local Logic’s business model, which aligns nicely with Royal LePage’s desire to continue innovating and providing value within the real estate industry.
“Local Logic independently develops their products in a way that makes sense for Royal LePage. From increasing the geographic coverage of their data, to creating new interfaces to present their data, to their development of new data products, their roadmap and priorities are aligned with our desire to continuously innovate.”
For more information, please visit www.locallogic.co.
Liz Dominguez is RISMedia’s associate content editor. Email her your real estate news ideas at ldominguez@rismedia.com. For the latest real estate news and trends, bookmark RISMedia.com.
