Business And Marketing Geography:
GIS And Commercial Real Estate
with evidence from the World Wide Web
by Grant Thrall, University of Florida
| What is Real Estate Information Technology (REITech) |  |
| Who are some services performed by consultants in the industry? | |
| Who are some firms that are offering software or Internet online products and services? | |
| Who are some firms that are using geographic technology to market their products | |
| How to get started with software | |
| How to get started with data | |
| How to learn more | |
|
REITech = Real Estate Information Technology. |
|
| The term REITech was introduced formally to the discipline in 1997, by naming a section of Journal of Real Estate Literature, Real Estate Information Technology. Grant Thrall, as editor for the computer applications and software review section of the journal proposed the name change of the journal section. | |
| REITech is the use of computer information technology to improve the real estate decision. Judgmental decisions can be improved because of better and more accessible information via the Internet. Judgmental decisions benefit from information technology through improved asset management, and more accurate market trend tracking. Jump to related www real estate finance and asset management links. | REITech includes Geographic Information Systems (GIS) borrowed from the geographers. REITech applies GIS to its own needs by using GIS to better describe, explain, and predict phenomena that is of interest to the real estate industry. Our goal is to use the technology to improve our decision making. Jump to related www real estate geography links. |
Below are www links that illustrate what REITech is, and how it is changing real estate.
|
Examples Of REITech For Residential Properties On The Internet |
|
| Florida Internet Real Estate Guide | lists new build homes on the www. Nice maps. No real GIS, but these www developers are going in the right direction with this www page. ... and demonstrates how real estate is being changed because of the world wide web. |
| Homebuyer's Fair | mortgage calculators and cost of living by city. Check out how much more income you will need to live the same lifestyle from city to city. |
| Cyberhomes | a home buyer web search engine through broker listings |
| HomeScout | a home buyer web search engine through broker listings |
| Owners Network | a home buyer web search engine for 'for sale by owner' listings. Free listings. |
| Vail Condo Rental | Example of a short term rental business. The www is used to market the owner's Vail condominiums for summer and ski holidays. |
| Examples of Geographic Information Systems (REITech) | |
| Xerox PARC | Map Viewer |
| EPA | geographic (GIS) data on the South Eastern US Region Including Florida |
| Canada | Canadian National Atlas Information Services (NAIS) NAISmap |
| Kinesava Geographics | Virtual Tourist |
| On Target Mapping | is a geography technology www provider with examples at their site of: Flood Plain Finder, Telephone Exchange Finder, Wireless Coverage Finder, and Wireless Customer Care. |
| Geographic Information Systems Applied To Banking And Real Estate | |
| Fair Lending | A Web Bibliography by Bill Dedman of The New York Times. This is a very impressive compilation of www sites that deal with federal regulation of the banking industry. Many of the links are to www pages about GIS (geographic information systems) is changing how banking is regulated. Bill Dedman has another related page called Resources for Journalists. |
|
Data
- International |
|
| Global Descriptive Data | |
| World outlook. | The "World Millennium Institute" calculates the rate of growth of the world population. Data is categorized by region, and other subdivisions. |
| International Data
At The Scale Of The Nation Data Available From Public Sources |
|
| US Department of State | maintains an educational geography www site. But, don't let the word "education" and the target market of elementary school kids fool you. This sleeper of a site has some good "heads up" geographic information on world hot spots. This is a good example of how basic descriptive geography and geographic knowledge of the world is becomming more important. |
| ABC News | "Country Profiles" has a descriptive geography www site. Their site has basic national information including population growth rate, economic base, etc. For examp, if you select Belize, you will be presented with basic national level information on the economy, birth and death rates. |
| World Data Center | has information from selected countries of the world - like China - on availability of physical and environmental geographic data. |
| NAFTA Border Home Page, | is a collection of World Wide Web resources on the internet, and of other data generated by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Market Access and Compliance, at the Department of Commerce |
| Australian National University | maintains a www page that contains 190 links to demographic information facilities world-wide. Check out ANU's www page of links on the topic "World Demographics Web Sites." |
| Clark University | library www page of world data sites. Check out their link to International Statistics, and you will find links to data sources on housing and demographics outside the United States |
| University of Costa Rica | provides demographic and geographic data that may be downloaded on Central American countries. |
| International Development Network | has publications of population projections 1970-2050 for Latin America and the Caribbean. The reports are not available on line at this time. |
| International Data
At The Scale Of The Nation Data Available From Private Sources |
|
| Geoscape International's Online Data Catalog | offers a comprehensive list of international geo-demographic databases on the market. Geoscape provides data from many countries from Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia. |
| Data
On The United States the public has more access to more geographically enabled data for the United States than any other country Data Available From Private Data Vendors |
|
| American Business Information: | data available on the www useful for marketing and real estate analysis with GIS. This site offers for sale mailing lists. An example of their charges would be for a mailing list of the 304 restaurants in Alachua County Florida, the total charge would be $152.00. A few of the data services at the ABI www site are at no charge. |
| Wessex Corporation | is a source of quality low cost TIGER/Line data in MapInfo and ArcView format. |
| TerraServer by Microsoft | shows Microsoft's long term commitment to geographic technology. Claimed to be the world's largest online database. The images you see in the Microsoft® TerraServer Web site come from two sources: The United States Geological Survey (USGS) provided georectified digitized aerial photographs (known as digital orthophotoquads) from their vast files. SPIN-2 provided high-resolution satellite images, products of a joint Russian/American venture to market declassified satellite photographs from sophisticated Russian mapping satellites. |
| Immigration to the US. | Where are immigrants arriving from and where are they going? This USA Today www page has some very interesting data showing current immigration levels for the US and also by ZIP code. |
| Data On The US Available From Public Sources | |
| ZIP+4 lookup by the US Postal Service. | ZIP+4 geocoding for business use is generally sufficient. But, how do you get that +4? The monthly release of the US Postal tapes is one way. This www site provides interactive look-up of ZIP+4 for one address at a time. |
| MapFactory | MapFactory has air photo data at the one foot resolution for the top 80 market areas in the US. They also provide three-dimensional data for these market areas. So, you can visualize the downtown building footprints and elevations. |
| REITech
- means big business for consulting and technology vendors |
|
| sample firms to check out for examples of what geography consulting firms can do in real estate | |
| Spatial Insights | Example geography consulting firm |
| Thompson Associates | Example geography consulting firm |
| Sample of Leading Geography Technology Software Firms | |||
| Name | Headquarters | Example Product | Internet URL |
| Caliper Corp. | Newton, Mass. | Maptitude GISplus TransCad |
http://www.caliper.com |
| Autodesk | San Rafael, California | World GIS | http://www.autodesk.com |
Avenza |
Burlington, Ontario Canada | MapPublisher | http://www.avenza.com |
| Intergraph | Huntsville, Alabama | GeoMedia | http://www.intergraph.com |
| ESRI | Redlands, California | ArcView | http://www.esri.com |
| MapInfo | Troy, New York | MapInfo | http://www.mapinfo.com |
| Sylvan Ascent | Santa Fe, New Mexico | a low cost GIS OCX for Visual Basic |
http://www.sylvanmaps.com |
| Literature and Links | |
| Bibliography of GIS. | A good place to start researching what has been written on GIS topics and who wrote it. While the bibliography is neither inclusive of everything, nor exhaustive, Duane Marble's site at Ohio State University is a good first step. Go Buckeyes! {of course I am a biased alumnus.} |
| Grant Thrall | Author of this www page. About a dozen of his articles are posted on the internet. |
| Links | Good place to find other GIS sites. |
| REITech
- Information Flow For Finance and Transaction and Asset Management |
|
| Real Estate Links | Information Flow
|
This www page has been designed and is maintained by Grant Ian Thrall. If you have comments on its content, including suggestions on links and content to add to this www page, please email him at thrall@geog.ufl.edu.
