Using Local Data To Market Your Brokerage’s Listings with Local Logic’s Vince Hodder

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Buyers are doing more research than ever, before even stepping foot into a house or contacting a Realtor. Your real estate brokerage website needs to provide not only data, but insights into that location data. Listen in as Local Logic’s Vince Hodder discusses the importance of local data.

TRANSCRIPT

Eric Stegemann (00:00):

Hi everybody. And welcome to Brokerage Insider the podcast where we interviewed the leaders in real estate and technology today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Vince Hodder. Now, Vince is the CEO and co founder of a company called Local Logic. It’s a spatial data company that quantifies cities to match people to the places that they should live. Now we’ve done a deal at Tribus with Local Logic. And we’re excited to talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes, but first of all, Vince, thanks for joining us here today.

Vince Hodder

Thanks for having me. It’s awesome to be here.

Eric Stegemann

Great. Well, tell us a little bit beyond being just the cofounder of Local Logic. I know you have a little more real estate in your background. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Vince Hodder (00:45):

Yeah, well, I mean, so my family has been a real estate for a very long time. So from a young age, I’ve kind of been really, really interested in, in the industry all aspects of it from development to you know, the brokerage business as well. And, and actually, so one of my current cofounder and I actually founded a real estate consulting firm prior to Local Logic, where we were essentially trying to use data to help urban planners, but also real estate developers kind of make more informed decisions as to their investments and their thesis around there. So since then kind of evolved into more of a tech startup, but had been working in the industry for a little while now.

Eric Stegemann (01:26):

Yeah, that’s, that’s great. So, so a family history in the real estate business, I were, were they in the brokerage business or developers or what, what did, what is your family done previously?

Vince Hodder (01:36):

So my grandfather was, was a, an investor. So he was, he was a lawyer based in Canada and he was working a lot on expiration deals. And through that, he was, he was investing in real estate in Europe, in the U S and in Canada. So was doing a ton of different types of deals. At one point, he was, he was buying up hotels in Florida and in the Caribbean, and then doing a lot of work on land acquisition and investment, mostly through, through plants in the Atlanta region. So I grew up kind of hearing about these crazy deals and, and, and was super interested in learning more into this kind of, you know, from pretty young, I remember wanting to be a real estate developer and I didn’t really know what that meant, but I really wanted to do it. And so kind of, you know, went in finance and studied in finance thinking I was going to go into real estate and then kind of quickly realizing that, you know, finance, the traditional finance world just really didn’t have that much to do with the real estate world. And so pivot of out of that, but it was always really, really excited by the opportunity that real estate enabled and kind of the ability of shaping the physical world through the power of the real estate industry.

 

Eric Stegemann (02:52):

Well, that’s, I mean, that’s great. I’m actually pretty jealous of the experience you had growing up and getting to see all of that. My, my family owned a business and my experience with real estate was obviously our house, but my, my parents did, did a construction project on building a building for their business. Right. And I think that’s what Chicago, my first foray into it, but it sounds like man, your family has a lot of a lot of experience in it is, is that kind of what, you know, obviously got you going into real estate, but then what specifically, if anything that your family had, or maybe something you found was what got you into the spatial data industry?

Vince Hodder (03:27):

Yeah, so, so the full story is that, although my grandfather was a lawyer and investor and working in the real estate industry, my father was actually an urban planner. And so when I was, I did a bachelor’s and finance at a CFN and worked as an analyst for a little while. And, and then I realized, well, if I’m going to go into real estate, I need to have a different ad. Jenny, I have a different perspective on the real estate industry. And so my dad being a planner, kind of encouraged me to look at that discipline and seeing maybe there’s, there could be some interesting synergies there. And so I went in and ended up doing a master’s degree in urban planning at McGill university here in Montreal. And it’s it’s a pretty small program. And one of the, one of the interesting aspects of it is that they designed their cohorts with people that have totally different backgrounds.

Vince Hodder (04:15):

So we had people that had worked at the UN prior to coming and doing the masters with people in statistics or in in, in, in other types of sciences. And then I had this kind of a background in finance and what urban planning did was essentially it gives me a lens on the impact, not policies around cities and the built form at large actually created these really interesting leavers to driving value in real estate. And so through not program, not only that I understand how the physical space actually impacted real estate I also was exposed to this whole new aspect of geospatial information systems, which essentially is technology that enables us to use geospatial data sets to try to represent what’s physically there in our world. And so we realized that there’s a tremendous amount of data on cities that really wasn’t being leveraged by the real estate industry, really wasn’t being used to its full capacity.

Vince Hodder (05:24):

And that’s where myself and my two other founders of co founders at least saw an opportunity to leverage that type of geospatial data and bring it into the real estate industry to create more transparencies to what’s around the property and why that matters to the person that’s gonna end up living there. And that’s, that’s something that I think was what was interesting for me because it really emerged kind of my interest real estate. And then my new found interest and passion for urban planning and data science. So when I was a kid, going back to that story, I was always convinced I was going to work in real estate because it was a physical asset. You can kind of walk the land, you could see the building. And now a few years later, I ended up in the data data world where there’s basically nothing tangible that you could kind of hold the receipt, which is, which is a weird reversal situation.

Eric Stegemann (06:13):

Well, I think it makes a, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense because from a high level you know, you, you’re kind of the puppet master a little bit of the data, right. And in terms of city planning and things like that, and urban planning of what you were going into when you have the data you can almost help people make you can, I don’t, I didn’t mean to just say almost you, you can absolutely help people make better decisions. Right. Right,

Vince Hodder (06:39):

Right. And so, yeah. So I mean, you know, one of the first things that you realized as an urban planner or studying planning is that there’s really two major stakeholders and actually decide how our cities are built. It’s not the planner, it’s the private, real estate sector. So the developers are the investors that actually building new properties, building those physical assets. And then it’s the consumer, it’s the, the, the citizens of that specific city, right. And where you live, where you choose to live in a city with respect to where your kids go to school, where you end up spending a lot time, what gym you go to, or what shops and services you use, or the big one where you work have such a huge implication on the types of cities that are developed around the citizens. And so as planners and as people passionate about building sustainable and cities not work for the people that, that, that live within them, you know, we really realized the impact we could have of providing that highly contextualized location formation to inform citizens that are looking to move or looking for a new house, exactly the type of lifestyle that, that property, but more specifically, that location would enable them to have.

Vince Hodder (07:54):

And so by showing that information, we’re helping people make better, more informed decisions that are more in lined with you know, the, the types of experience they want to live. And, you know, the analogy I often use is if you compare if you go to any kind of website or traditional website and look at traditional real estate data, and then you compare house downtown of a city with a similar house in the suburb, the only differentiating factor based on data is price. And that differential is huge, but then you will look at square footage, we’ll look at number of bedrooms, bathrooms, we’ll look at those pictures and they’ll be like, okay, this is not the same value, right. Location makes up that difference. So if we’re able to explain to people, contextualize the value associated with location, suddenly that price point makes more sense. And for some individuals, maybe the quality of the coffee shops, the quality of the school was actually matters a ton when comparing those two alternatives. And that’s what we wanted to create is through data. And the first step in doing that, like you said, was getting access to that data and building out that digital representation of cities, that digital representation of that intuitive gut feeling you get when you stand outside of a house. Right. Or when, when you’re, when you’re on a specific street corner in a city.

Eric Stegemann (09:13):

Yeah. I, I think that’s so I mean, it’s, if you’re a real estate agent, what you just said is kind of somewhat obvious. But at the same point, it’s less obvious in the fact that very few real estate agents that are out there are out there helping quantify. W you know, should you live closer? I know when I had my brokerage before there was anything like Local Logic that was out there we were trying to help first time home buyers specifically identify how much money they should spend on their houses, but particularly how much more they would spend on consumables getting to and from work. So, you know, it would be like, okay, yeah, if you, if you you could buy a more expensive house closer to your job, and you’re going to save $40 a week, how much more does $40 a week or $80 a week, or between two, you know, spouse one and spouse, two $80 a week buy you more in house. And then that’s a, an appreciating asset instead of a consumer.

Vince Hodder (10:12):

Right. But there’s, there’s all these externalities. And that was the calculation that like, we got really, we nerved out on for a long time of like, you know, yes. Okay. So there’s the cost of transportation, but then there’s also, you know, the cost of your time. Like if you’re commuting for two hours a day, well, how much is your time worth for those two hours, then there’s a cost on, you know, health, like there’s, there’s huge health, health ramifications around commuting, right. And depending on the mode of transit that you choose, but if you factor all of these, what we call externalities and you associate a dollar value, it’s sometimes the, the, the more expensive property in the city center could make financial sense. Right. I think that’s the, it’s how you explain that? How do you quantify that to somebody that might not be aware of all those nuances?

Eric Stegemann (10:59):

I think it’s very astute. I tell people all the time we do advisory for startups and take investment stakes in small startup companies in a lot of cases that are in the prop tech space. And one of the things that I often identify that to them, that nobody ever seems to think about is what’s the value of your time, right? Nobody seems to recognize that everybody has a limited amount of time and that their time is valuable and that they should be doing X instead of Y because X actually makes them money. Why is something they could get a $12, an hour person to go do? And you don’t need, I just had this conversation with a handyman, you know, not even somebody we advise, but a handyman was sitting there saying, yeah, I’ve I sent in a 30 to 40 hours a month.

Eric Stegemann (11:48):

So a full week of an employee’s time doing nothing, but just driving to go pick up parts that he needed. I said, well, man, you could hire somebody to do that and, and, or just have an Uber or something. Right, right. So yeah. Excellent, excellent points. Let’s talk a little, let’s dive into the data industry a little bit more because this is something that, you know, we’ve been an outsider to the data space and yet every data company that’s in the real estate industry and there’s a number of them, but everyone has wanted to sell data to try this for umpteen years, 11 years, since we started, right. Everyone reaches out and says, Hey, we can do parcels or, Hey, we can do geocoding or, Hey, we can do you know, spatial data or whatever. And it seems as, as an outsider to that space, it seems like this kind of old school industry where there’s a few players and the insiders all know that CoreLogic has this data set and black Knight has this data set, and this other company has this data set. You know, Pitney Bowes was out there and having address data sets that were out there, right? Like there’s a lot of these companies that just go resell all of their data without telling you where they got it from. So as a, you know, a fairly new entrant into the space, you know, what have you seen in, how are you kind of counteracting that old school mentality?

Vince Hodder (13:10):

Yeah. Well, I think there’s, there’s two important points here. I totally agree with your analysis of the space where, you know, when we first came in, we realized that cable, everyone everyone’s just reselling other people’s data. Right. And there’s, there’s few real data providers that are bringing new types of data sets to the market. But so I think there’s, there’s, there’s two categories of data providers right now. There’s what I call it, traditional real estate data vendors. And then there is what the industry calls alternative data vendors that be, would very much fall into that second category. And so I think there’s, we’re starting to see a shift where we’re starting to bring in new types of insights from you perspectives on the, on the market or around cities, in our case into the real estate data space, which is really opening up the possibilities of what we can do with the, my biggest issue with the traditional real estate data space is that they’re selling you data and we don’t need more data.

Vince Hodder (14:08):

We need more insights. We need more actionable insights in this industry. And so what we’ve done differently, but we’re actively trying to do more of is not so raw data, but rather sell information. So information that you can actually take action on. And so we spent a ton of time trying to package this information in order to make an actually a good example is that, you know, to build the products that we currently have ultimately what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to quantify that feeling. So I was talking about this earlier, right? And agents are gonna know what I’m talking about here. If you go to a specific neighborhood or a specific street in the neighborhood, you kind of intuitively get the vibe of that space, right? You understand if he feels, you know, if it’s safe, if it’s not, you can kind of understand the types of people that are around what’s happening, who would fit well in this neighborhood based on what they’re trying to accomplish or the lifestyle they’re trying to have, we’re trying to quantify that feeling.

Vince Hodder (15:04):

I’m intuitive understanding of space through data. So what we have to do is basically replicate what, what, what the human brain does of taking it. Thousands of sources of data from different things, making sense of it, to create that field. What we do is we source hundreds of different data sets, and then we combine them in a way that’s meaningful to our users. So the home buyer. So for example, we’ll look at things like the ratio of the width of the street, to the height of the buildings, the setback of the building from the sidewalk, the width of sidewalks, traffic patterns, how many pedestrians there are, whether there’s on street parking or not. They’re the, the, the surface area of the canopy coverage of the trees within that street. It pops the types of shops and services that diversity of siphoned services around what types of modes of transportation will have access to what’s how far school is a noise level.

Vince Hodder (15:56):

And all of these things, we packaged together into what we call location scores, which are essentially indicators to try to categorize or make sense of that space and for the user, instead of throwing them a ton of new data points we’re actually saying, Hey, you care about a pedestrian friendly area. You care about being able to move around using public transport. Well, this is a really good spot for you, right? And so we’re making sense of location and make it easy for people to understand what it’s like to be there. But then more importantly, to compare one opportunity, one house to another house in another neighborhood. And so I think what I’m hoping the data industry is going to do more of is actually use datasets, combine them in a meaningful manner to provide consumers or other businesses with new, innovative insights that are actionable for whatever that stakeholder is trying to do. And I think that’s where we get ahead, because at some point, and we see this with some, what some players in the industry there’s kind of data overload and the consumer just doesn’t know what to look for or how to make sense of all that information. And so we really need to synthesize the ads into actionable insights for the user.

Eric Stegemann (17:18):

Yeah. I, I mean, I think that’s very, very smart because everybody can go out and buy data. And by the way, folks, for those of you that don’t know some of these data sets can be even an individual data set, for example, school districts and school attendance zones, which is, you know, like elementary schools and middle schools, et cetera. Just that data set for just the United States alone can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy that. And that’s just the dataset. So you just block that there, that doesn’t even include the extra data on a, that you’d want to provide insights to the consumer on, for example you know, how good is the school, right? So that’s, that’s just laying the box on top of the map that says, Hey, here’s, here’s where the school district is. So, you know, Vince, these insights that you’re building maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like that’s, what’s your differentiator in terms of the company, because I don’t see these insights from other data companies really. I just see the, Hey, we have parcels, right?

Vince Hodder (18:21):

Yeah. Well, it’s, it’s part of, so, so again, we have kind of a team of what we built as a team of what we call urban planners, turn data scientists. So we’re taking kind of that in depth understanding of cities, and we’re trying to use data to make it available to as many people as possible. And so it, it certainly is where we started, right? So quantifying cities over now starting to move into is saying well, okay, how do we apply this type of perspective, this type of incidence level of insight to the real estate market, right? So starting to see trends of how people are valuing different types of spaces in cities in the real estate market. And that’s been really, really interesting to where now we can assemble those two different realities and, and try to be predictive in where we’re seeing the market go and what aspects of a location are driving value.

Vince Hodder (19:15):

And then the second aspect is saying, well, like, and you’ve touched on this a little bit earlier saying, it’s not just about getting access to the data or making sense of the data. It’s then presenting in a manner that actually makes sense for the user and whatever that, you know, the user is trying to accomplish. So it’s presenting the right data point at the right moments in the conversion funnel or presenting the right data point, the right information to the consumer at the right time for them to make a better decision. And that’s that’s a really, really challenging thing to do because you basically have to tailor the types of perspectives that you’re bringing the consumer based on their interests, their perspective, whatever they’re trying to accomplish either in buying a house or selling a property or understanding women neighborhoods like. So

 

Eric Stegemann (20:05):

I think that makes perfect sense. So, you know, you guys have, have closed some big deals at Local Logic, and you’re not that old of a company. And I always find that a lot of big, huge real estate brokerage companies, they wait until a company gets a little more mature to buy things from them to make sure everything’s going to work out, but you’ve got, I mean, in Canada, you have the three, three of the largest entities in Canada in Sotheby’s Canada which is the entire country of Canada has one franchise of Sotheby’s. It real a page, which is essentially the Coldwell banker of Canada, more or less if you’re listening to the United States, I mean, it’s, it’s behemoth, it’s the big boy that’s there. And then I think that the, the icing on the cake is realtor.ca, which is the number one real estate search website. I believe in all of Canada. You have deals with all of these guys who, you know, is the insights, is what you’re working on. Is that what helped you land these big deals as being a newer company?

Vince Hodder (21:10):

Well, I think so. So there’s, there’s two aspects of that. I think in Canada, unlike in the U S there’s few companies trying to innovate in this space, and that was true when we first started. So I think being a Canadian startup, going to Canadian brokerages or websites was kind of an edge that we had. All of these companies took a, took a shot on us. It was a risk. We were, I mean, I think we signed that deal three years ago now. So we were a tiny company. And, and, and and so I think, I think it was, it was, it was a ton of hustle to make that happen. You know, we, we really, really persistent on the value that we believe location data would have in Canada. And we wanted to see that shift in the industry.

Vince Hodder (21:58):

And so once we kind of landed one of those 50 accounts, well, then it kind of made sense for all the others to jump on board because they saw traffic increase to their competitor. Right. And so when we went, when we signed, one of those deals, key is renouncing, well, this is super relevant information. I want to have access to that as I was doing searches online all of the other websites recognize that and then contacted us to see how, how we do business. The other element that was really important for us being a new player in the space was making sure that our products actually had value. And so this is something we’re super animated about. You know, we want to make sure it works for the clients that are buying our stuff. And so with all of these deals we were always very upfront with them saying, Hey, you know, let’s make sure there’s, there’s value here.

Vince Hodder (22:48):

Let’s run a pilot, let’s see exactly the impact that our solutions have. Let’s see if consumers actually care about this data and then let’s iterate and make sure that it’s working for everyone. And so with all of these deals, we started with small pilot, we saw the impact. And then we grew those, we’d read those partnerships over time as, as there was more and more comfort with the value of our products. And today, I mean we have awesome relationships with all of those brands and we’re, we’re building out new, innovative integrations with them practically every quarter. And, and it’s become a really, really fun thing to do with them while we’re iterating. And we’re thinking and innovating together as to what the industry should look for next and how we can make those integrations better, how we can make teen home buyers search online search experience, just that much better with a whole new ton of data that we’re starting to acquire. Yeah. I, I interviewed

Eric Stegemann (23:46):

For this podcast Patrick Pichette, who’s a VP at realtor CA a few weeks ago, and he had just excellent things to say about you guys both on the recording and before we even started recording. So he, you know, he was a big fan and

Vince Hodder (24:04):

And I mean, yeah, to their credit realtor.ca for, for being that large of an organization is super, super innovative. I mean so yeah, you know, we’re a good example of them taking, taking risks and working with small startups, but I know last year we participated, well, we were actually on the, on the judging panel this time of a hackathon they put up and they were they were looking at new companies and saying, Hey, how can we innovate how we can, how can we propel new types of ideas or new technology in the industry? And so you know, congrats to them for making that a priority, because I think it enables them to have an innovative product and B and B introducing new technology in the industry. So, so, you know, we were super lucky to, to, to meet up with them and to make that happen, but this is not a one time thing for them. They’re there, they’re always looking for new tech,

Eric Stegemann (24:53):

The, and, and, you know, I think that they’re a very innovative organization, as you mentioned. Have you looked at any engagement metrics, like, have you, do you, do you have any data that you could possibly share with our listeners on if we can get somebody to engage with the map they’re X percent more likely to to, to talk to a realtor or something like that?

Vince Hodder (25:15):

So we’re a data company, right? So we’re pretty data driven, or we try to be at least in how we did all products. So yes, we bring data to the table. We bring new types of data to the table, but you know, we’re selling and we’re, we’re, we’re building products and products that are built on top of those data sets. But ultimately what we look to do is be that location intelligence layer throughout a whole website, and bring that experience right from the homepage all the way down to that listing page and work with our partners to really help them reach their objectives of making their website or web portal as effective as possible for whatever they’re trying to accomplish with it. Most of the time that’s converting traffic into actual leads, right? And so you know, through AB testing, we make sure that all our product are optimized to attract traffic.

Vince Hodder (26:06):

And so you know, we’re seeing, we’re seeing increases in the 13% in traffic to pages that have our data. This is, you know, of course, through SEO. And so Google not only recognizes our printers and websites as being experts on real estate, they also recognize that they’re experts on location. And so a search is like, you know best neighborhood to buy hosts in Austin, right. And then suddenly, or, you know, this neighborhood plus real estate in, in the Google search form. Well, suddenly, you know, you’re going to pop up because you have that really in depth, understanding of location as content on your website, on your webpage. Yeah. Then that’s amazing. Go ahead.

Eric Stegemann (26:48):

I was going to say it’s a 13% increase especially for a high volume traffic site. I mean, that’s just out of

Vince Hodder (26:55):

This world numbers, right. And what’s fun is that this is data, right. It’s not somebody writing up content. So the data is refreshed. It’s, it’s, it can be done at scale. So it’s not for neighborhoods. It could be, you know, 400,000 neighborhoods or 40,000 neighborhoods that were able to create that data for, or content for it could be you know, any number of listings where, where we have that information and that written content. Second one is, is all about engagement, right? So if you’re looking through the funnel, you’re attracting that traffic to your website, then it’s all about engaging that traffic. What we’re finding is, you know, when you’re looking for a house online you’re going to be engaged with the site and then suddenly, you know, you want more information on neighborhood while you’re going to go to Google, or you’re going to switch, switch to other tabs on your browser.

Vince Hodder (27:43):

So we’re really focused on trying to be as contextualized as possible, bringing in all that information directly on the webpage so that the user is able attempt to basically do the jobs or the find the info that they’re looking for without being distracted and maybe not coming back to your website. And so what we’re seeing is, you know, close to four times increase in engagement on a site with our solutions. Essentially, we’re giving them more to click on more, to more to discover bringing them into the process and the funnel that website. And finally, this is kind of the ultimate a measure of success for us it’s conversion. So how many of of those traffic, that traffic is actually converting to leads? And this is so through an AB test, basically where we’re testing the same site, the same page, and we’re bringing two cohorts of users.

Vince Hodder (28:36):

So two groups of users. So the first group we’re showing our information, the second group, we’re not showing our information and we’re seeing a 1330 6% increase in the likelihood that you’re going to be contacting the agents or converting and in some shape or form if you’re using and seeing our solutions. And so essentially what that’s telling us is we’re giving the user the right information to make them feel comfortable, that they can take the next step and actually contact an agent to get more information on our property, which is the whole point of the website. And so for us, when we’ve got that first number, it was kind of like a huge, a huge relief and cheer success because, you know, we’re seeing the value yes, for the consumer through that number, but also for a client for that brokerage or that portal now website and helping them accomplish what their, their business objective is

Eric Stegemann (29:31):

That that’s, those are just amazing numbers. And, and frankly, we’ll talk more about our our connection here in a second, but I think I can’t really, really can’t wait to see how that comes out for our clients too. And talk about that, you know, maybe down the road somewhere. So, you know obviously we’re in an interesting time with pan with the pandemic and it’s certainly shown that people can change on a dime what some of their desires are and seeking real estate, you know, here in the States, we’ve seen people move and trying to move away outside of San Francisco and New York and Chicago and, and go to either the barbs or maybe just, you know, go to an entirely different state. Because of that. Have you noticed any differences in what people are looking for when they engage with your data over what it was pre March?

Vince Hodder (30:24):

Yeah, so being, being real estate nerds, but also urban planner nerds, this has been a huge topic of discussion on our, on our company Slack and in our zoom meetings. We first started seeing impacts kind of the first week of COVID. And it was funny because the types of information we were looking at was really working with the news. So I don’t know if you remember, but at the beginning of COVID, everybody was buying a bike and it was a big thing. And all the bike shops were sold out of bikes. Anyways, this was the case in, in, in, in Canada. And we saw the popularity for a cycling friendly homes skyrocket. So basically everybody was saying like, Hey, I got this new bike. I’m going to, I’m going to commute to work by bike. I’m going to use it all the time.

Vince Hodder (31:02):

And so we saw that shift almost immediately. And of course that’s kind of anecdotal, but every time what we’re seeing is that there’s real shifts in the way that people are searching. We wrote a blog post about this a few weeks ago, but we’re seeing a huge increase in the average commute distance that people are willing to do in different cities throughout the U S and Canada. You know, we stopped things like 42% higher increase in commute times that people were willing to consider for a new house in Calgary, Canada. I think it’s 16% in Toronto, 32% in Montreal. And so essentially what this is telling us is that people are saying I’m probably going to be less going out, and I’m not going to be going to work into work as often. I’m willing to work further away be in a suburb.

Vince Hodder (31:55):

So I think, and this is, this is where I see the value and power of data is that I think this is a really interesting leading indicator for us to start understanding what’s happening in the market. So before a transaction happens, we’re starting to see these trends where people are actually considering different homes. And, and data’s going to be, in my opinion, a tool that an agent or any kind of real estate professional is going to be able to use to better understand where the market is going and help their consumers, their clients interpret the trends that we’re seeing in the news that are oftentimes not as contextualized as we’d like to when we’re analyzing whether or not we should buy this one specific home. Yeah. I

Eric Stegemann (32:40):

Mean, it’ll be interesting to see what happens. My, my buddy, Rob Hahn has been on a once already, and we’ve already recorded a second episode with him and he actually wrote a blog post, right? When all this started called the rise of the excerpt, not even the suburb, the answer, you know, being far out and saying, you know, it might be a two hour drive to get to work, but because I maybe only need to go in a, once every two weeks, it’s not that big of a deal. And I’d rather enjoy my life, sit on an acre of ground, beyond a Lake, et cetera, with my family, the other the rest of the, the two week time. So yeah, it’d be interesting.

Vince Hodder (33:18):

We’re seeing trends like that too. It’s unclear whether these are second early, you know, vacation homes, but there’s definitely interest in rural areas. And there’s, there’s been an uptick in traffic there. What we’re also seeing is that, so in conductors kind of confinement, and, and we were, we were we had less confined the, during the summer and now it kind of started back up again. And that traffic to those other properties has proportionally increased. Right? And so it’s hard to see how much of this is going to be a long lasting impact versus kind of part of the new cycle. And as things evolve, people are, are, are, are, are considering different avenues. So we’re keeping a really, really good look on, on, on how those trends are evolving. And, and I think it’s going to be interesting to see exactly what types of environments people end up choosing. And what are the things that they’re willing to compromise on. And what are the things that they kind of want to keep the same as it was before?

Eric Stegemann (34:17):

Yeah, I think those are going to be very interesting insights. I look forward to seeing you guys get some data out on this in the future and looking into it and advising our clients on it. So let’s, let’s talk about that a little bit as a segue you know, a Tribus we’ve done a deal with you guys and now our, our clients are going to have access to your data both on a public facing website and on their backend pieces. You know, we’ve talked a lot about websites and how a real page and, and a realtor.ca and Sotheby’s Canada and, and one of our largest clients, Remax Results now has it on their front facing website. And, and that, there’s some obvious things that happen when you engage. You put that on there, and obviously all of your engagement metrics are amazing.

Eric Stegemann (35:02):

And I can’t wait to pull the data, but I wanted to talk for just a second, you know, for for agents in brokerages of ours that are now getting that data, or in any brokerage that has access to this data. We’re maybe it’s also added to not only on the front end of their website, but maybe in the back end where they can connect up and show clients data. What are some things that you think agents could do to really set themselves apart by using the data or sending a client access to a map or, or, or something along those lines to really help them find the right property for them?

Vince Hodder (35:32):

Well, I think consumers are expecting agents to be kind of, you know, the experts of location in the same way that they’re experts of the real estate process. Right. And so I think what our tools enable an agent to do is really get super familiar with the neighborhood, but more specifically, that one house, right. That one address. So all our data is actually calculated at the address level. And so, you know, what’s the noise level like there, what are the sources of noise nearby? What’s the really good grocery that’s next door. What school district does that house fit into, right. All of this information you need to know. And so we kind of assembled it for you and enable you to save a ton of time, instead of doing that research to you know, to, to, to put together for clients or if you’re going into pitch it’s, it’s having that at your fingertips.

Vince Hodder (36:23):

In a matter of seconds, my friend just bought a house and he was like, look, the agent didn’t know what school we were at. My kid was going to go to, I was asking all these location questions. They had no clue. I ended up doing the research on Google. We decided not to go with them. Right. That’s unacceptable. It’s, it’s, it’s, you should have access to all this data and you should be prepared. And I think hopefully our solution enables you to do that much quicker. The second aspect is I think you’re able to also understand and talk about or compared to different properties and using data and the scores that we create enables you to be pretty explicit about the differences in location with one property other. So when you’re helping a client compare the two alternatives saying, well, look, this one’s a five minute drive away from your, your work, or it’s a two minute walk away from the nearest bus stop.

Vince Hodder (37:15):

The other one is 10 minutes away. The noise here is higher than the other, our metrics make it really, really easy. So basically we score every address from zero to 10 on all these different factors. We’re able to say like, Hey groceries, here are 10 out of 10 grocery stores at this other property are six out of 10. So you have less diversity, or it’s harder to get access to grocery stores at this property. It makes it easier for people to take decisions. And I think it’s a good metric that agents can use to help frame the discussion around multiple options in terms of specific properties.

Eric Stegemann (37:48):

I think all of that is, is the kind of stuff that helps them set apart. Because I think like your friend found, I think the average agent knows the basics of a property. I would say most agents usually know where the school district is and, and things like that. But I find that most of them don’t understand the other things that people really care about. And, and, you know, we’re all human. The agent is a human too. They care about those things in that area. But I think a lot of times training inside of brokerages don’t factor into helping agents identify what the what the non real estate specific, what the non-property specific items are. What I mean is around location is I, I, it is important for me to be near a coffee shop. It important for me to be near a grocery store. It is important for me to be in an excellent school district, you know? And when you think about those things and ask the questions, I think that’s how you help them find the exact right property for them instead of look at 150 homes and they never end up purchasing.

Vince Hodder (38:53):

Yeah, exactly. It’s tailoring the experience to that specific user and highlighting the elements of a location that matter to them. Right. What we try to do is look at everything outside of the four walls of the property and helping the consumer or the agent makes sense of that easily and make that data accessible, right. Increase the transparency associated with that type of insight. And so I think, like you said, it enables the expert to get that much more data, right? Saying it’s a three minute walk versus a 10 minute walk to the nearest subway station. That’s important. You look like a pro at you’re able to actually pull out those stats, but then it’s also to say, well, look, you might be really familiar and really good with, and majority of business might be coming from one specific neighborhood. Well, this enables you to kind of explore other neighborhoods or see other opportunities and still be that expert, still show up with the right insight, the right detailed information about a property that, you know, that’s in a neighbor that you might be less familiar with.

Eric Stegemann (39:53):

All, all excellent commentary there. Now we’re out of time, but I always ask every one of my interviewees, I always ask them the last question. That’s the same, cause I always like hearing what their feedback is, and that is if you could change one thing in the real estate industry, wave your magic wand tonight and change one thing and it was different tomorrow, what would it be?

Vince Hodder (40:17):

I think it’s all about transparency for me. I think the real estate industry is so exciting. There’s so much opportunity, you know, where you live or where you invest, could radically change the life that you have. And I wish that everyone would have the opportunity of being involved either as a consumer or being involved in the industry as a professional. And, and I think the solution to make that more accessible is through transparency, transparency of data, but also transparency around the process, making it clear, make it simple for people to understand and to start getting interested in real estate and being involved in some way. And so, you know, hopefully we’re doing our part to make that a small reality around location characteristics, but I think there’s so much more to do around making the industry more accessible and making it more transparent for people to want to participate and want to be involved

Eric Stegemann (41:10):

Just to, to put the cherry on top of that statement in every single industry where transparency has been brought to that industry over the past you know, time of recorded history and every single place of transparency it’s enhanced or made more transactions happen because of that, it’s the same thing about bringing liquidity to it. So the more transparency and the more liquidity you bring to an individual market, the better that market overall does. So something to keep in the back of a, of everybody’s brain, there is the more transparent you can make it, the more open you can make it. Chances are the more transactions you’ll gain and maybe more transactions are done as a whole. So, great. Well, thanks so much Vince, for joining us, I really appreciate the insights. And I look forward to our partnership here and, and getting your data and this entire out to all of our customers.

Vince Hodder Eric Stegemann (42:02):

Thanks for having the Eric. It was, it was a blast.

Eric Stegemann (42:02):

Yeah, same here. Now that was Vince Hodder. Now Vince again is the CEO and co founder of Local Logic, a special data company that we are now partnered with here at Tribus, but works with some of the largest brands In North America. You’ve been listening to BrokerageInsider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. Please make sure to subscribe using your favorite podcast player to get all of our future episodes delivered right to your device. Thanks so much for listening.

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CEO | Director of Strategy
With more than 17 years experience in the real estate industry, including being a Realtor and Broker / Owner, Stegemann brings a wealth of knowledge to this job as CEO of TRIBUS. He focuses his time on helping brokers enhance and expand their business and working with the TRIBUS labs team to consider what's next in real estate.
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