The challenges companies are facing have never been more nuanced, especially in the commercial real estate sector. These changes have placed an even greater need for data-driven decision making. Accessing human mobility and location intelligence data can lead to deeper data analysis of the health and opportunities in specific markets, submarkets, and neighborhoods.
Analyzing migration patterns
Covid revealed that people want more space to live and work. Urban dwellers reevaluated their situations and decided cramped apartments weren’t suitable long-term living and working environments.
As a result, major cities across the country saw mass exoduses when the pandemic hit. Office spaces were abandoned and rent prices plummeted in order to attract residents. Now almost two years later, people are back on the move.
According to a 2021 survey, 21% of professionals expect to continue to be fully remote, while 19% expect to be hybrid. Apartment List estimated that in the past year, 20% of people moved to new cities and 12% of people moved across state lines. These changes will continue to occur as companies evaluate their approaches to hybrid and remote models moving forward.
As a result of resident fluidity, it’s imperative to use data to inform future investment opportunities, as well as current assets. With Spectus, users and companies can build home switcher datasets to identify areas of opportunities based on address changes, both permanent or temporary.
Identifying health of changing markets
With the amount of movement happening, the health of markets have evolved. As discussed, people have moved a lot during the past two years. Data from local trips is crucial in understanding how people are interacting within a certain area.
If someone begins their trip in a residential area, and is spending a majority of their time in a downtown area, they are probably in an office. Depending on the number of times a week they are doing this, you can begin to understand the work and traffic patterns for given areas.
Spectus gives you the capabilities to understand how we measure mobility trends over time at the national, state, and county levels. Understanding these trends can bolster migration data sets aiming to build investment strategies. You can then run a deeper analysis by layering in Cuebiq Stops data, and socio-demographic data. This helps delineate who is making these trips and the purpose of the trips.
Due diligence process
Location intelligence and human mobility data are essential in the due diligence process when evaluating new investments. Although many factors go into the process, it’s crucial to understand the current and historical human mobility data around a potential investment.
Using your list of relevant locations, or a single location, combined with the power of Spectus, you can evaluate the historical data of a property, as well as ongoing data as soon as it’s available. This gives you insight into the activity happening around a specific property as well as the surrounding areas. With the amount of migration happening since the start of the pandemic, it’s imperative to gain an understanding of the activity and movement around a potential investment property.
Users/company classification
The Boston Consulting Group partnered with Google to release a study identifying the uses and value of location intelligence across various industries. To no surprise, every sector interviewed said the use of location intelligence is very important today.
- 95% of respondents across all industries—and 100% of respondents from the real estate sector—said the use of location intelligence is important today.
- 91% of overall respondents—and 99% of the real estate respondents—said location intelligence will be substantially more important over the next three to five years.
The same study also established three categories for location intelligence users depending on their maturity of location intel. They characterized companies as Location Intelligence Followers, Location Intelligence Challengers, and Location Intelligence Leaders.
Location Intelligence Followers are companies who are just beginning to incorporate location intelligence into their business decision making process. These organizations employ general implementations, but are still trailing behind others.
Location Intelligence Challengers are companies or organizations which use location intelligence on a more sophisticated basis. While they’re still learning the use cases for location intelligence, they are building and growing their uses on a consistent basis.
Location Intelligence Leaders are organizations which have fully flushed out location intelligence use cases and reporting capabilities. They understand who they are looking for, and how to build the data sets to make informed decisions.
Out of all of the companies who participated in this survey, only 15% qualified as Location Intelligence leaders. The majority of the companies were categorized as Location Intelligence Challengers. Connect with our sales team to become a leader when it comes to the use of location intelligence. Book a demo here!
