Location, Inc., a provider of online real estate research tools, launched in 2002 with the intent to objectively measure which neighborhoods are the best fit for a particular customer, based on criteria such as school quality, crime rates, home appreciation values, and the prominence of upwardly mobile singles. The housing matchmaker service has been available on the Woonsocket, RI-based company’s website, NeighborhoodScout.com, since then, to help consumers determine which pockets around the country best fit with their lifestyles. Its search engine also helps people find neighborhoods most similar to the ones they already know they like.
Last week the company launched a new service, hosted at NeighborhoodScoutReports.com, to produce neighborhood-specific documents akin to the vehicle history reports offered by the Web service Carfax. “There isn’t any comparable product for what is obviously and vastly the largest purchase for most Americans,” says Andrew Schiller, the company’s founder, CEO, and chief scientist. “The largest risk for people buying a home is rarely the condition of the house, but the location of the house.”
The aim of Location’s new product is to provide information on the surroundings of a particular house or property that has already caught your eye. “It isn’t about showing me the best neighborhoods for this criteria, but rather showing me a detailed report for the neighborhood that contains this property,” says Schiller.
He says the website’s data-crawling algorithms scan multiple, disparate sources of information to create one comprehensive report, which sells for $19.99. The reports pull data from roughly 70 sources, and use patented or patent-pending data engines built by the company’s in-house geographer-statisticians. The product is also fully available on mobile browsers. That way customers can get on-the-spot neighborhood information on a property with their iPads or iPhones when
