What PlanningAlerts.com Can Teach Us About Data
I’m fascinated with data and how it can be harnessed and used online. I’m continually amazed at how people take seemingly mundane data and create a useful service out of it. A great example of this is PlanningAlerts.com – a site I found via a post on Springwise (which is a great blog in its own right).
“The UK startup functions as a targeted search engine, digitally scouring local government agencies’ online records for news of construction projects destined to affect the lives of local residents. Residents can sign up, enter a postal code and receive alerts by email. Result: if there’s a public meeting scheduled to discuss zoning changes in a nearby subdivision, users receive word of the meeting’s time and place.”
This is an excellent example of using hyperlocal data that truly adds value to people’s lives. Personally, I’d like to see this type of service in the US.
PlanningAlerts also teaches us something about data gathering and its importance to web applications. As we’ve seen, those who own the data are the ones in control (think NAVTEQ, Amazon, Fidelity, First American, MLS etc). They make their data available for a price, for which third party web application developers are happy to pay – since it’s the only way to get in the game short of spending exorbitant amounts of money to gather your own set of data.
The data that PlanningAlerts gathers is mostly public, but it’s still painful to find the public websites and then suck the right data off of it. An example of this in the US would be the public property records data that companies like First American and Fidelity gather on homes around the country. It is excruciatingly painful to get, it comes in all formats, and takes an army of employees to parse and make useful.
Lastly, we talk a lot about all the eye-candy and “real estate porn” available online these days. Those sites came from people like me, trying to come up with useful ways to use data put into a way that the public can use daily. However, as web application developers, we sometimes get tunnel vision and don’t think of what the local real estate professional or general consumer would really find useful in their own lives. That’s why critiques and ideas via blogging are so important to us, they give us insights beyond our own.
Now, who’s going to make the PlanningAlerts for the US?
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12 Comment(s)
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- From Affiliate Freebies and Marketing Ideas » Blog Archive » What PlanningAlerts.com Can Teach Us About Data | Nov 1, 2007
- From Mortgage Business » What PlanningAlerts.com Can Teach Us About Data | Nov 1, 2007
- From My Ghillie » What PlanningAlerts.com Can Teach Us About Data | Nov 1, 2007
Richard Pope | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
Anyone who want to make a US version to grab the code from here:
http://code.google.com/p/planningalerts/
(Richard, planningalerts.com volunteer)
Christian Sterner | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
I have a real life version of how valuable this type of thing is: Boulder Colorado. Boulder is the best town in the country (yeah…I said it) because of the excruciating amount of planning, and active community members that we have. While Boulder is a developer’s nightmare, every single plan for anything involving a community (even a reconstruction or addition of a single home) goes through an intense amount of scrutiny. Many people write this off, and literally hate Boulder because of this. But, in the end, this is why our property value keeps trucking, and the majority of people here are happy with where they live. I love the idea of PlanningAlerts.com (thanks for the heads up on this) because a lot of what I dislike about our country right now is mindless development, with no clear outlook on the land/community 50 years from now.
Metrowest MA Real Estate | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
This would be a great tool for tracking local information. Of course as a Realtor, this information would extremely useful for many reasons. This is the type of data that would make a good local blog even better.
West Hampstead Estate Agent | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
It’s a great system
Galen | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
Erik, I spotted that in the SpringWise newsletter and was disappointed when I found out it was Britain-specific. To the first person / company in the US to do it: give me a call!
Hawaii Life | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
This would be great in Hawaii for warning alerts for Tidal waves, Hurricanes, High Surf, floods, etc.
Erik Hersman | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
Galen, I’m thinking the same thing. I want to know who’s going to start aggregating this data – it would be highly valuable in many of the apps out there today. You do a great job on Estately finding hyper local school info and putting it into a way that people can make sense of it. I think you’d have a hey-day with this!
anonymous | Nov 2, 2007 | Reply
It’s a cool idea, but I’ve got two reservations…
1) Will there be enough planning applications in the vicinity of a given household to make it worthwhile for it to even remember a site like this?
2) By law, local authority planning departments in the UK are obligated to notify those residents on whom a planning application will impact. As such, they now receive a letter in the post and are invited to raise objections. The website might be useful for residents who want to keep an eye on everything that’s going on in a neighbourhood, but doesn’t the local authority letter already fulfill this function for those who would really be affected (i.e. the neighours?).
There’s also another trend in the UK, which impacts this business model. UK planning authorities are inundated with planning applications (I think they had something like 600,000 household planning applications in 2006), so they’re looking to “privatise” some of this workload. This will most likely be resolved through something called self-certification of planning permission for certain works. So for example , builders or architects might be able to self-certify that certain types of work comply with planning regulations. The duty would then be on these individuals or entities to consult local residents etc. Not sure how much of this is already taking place, but it’s certainly in the works.
Art Raby | Nov 2, 2007 | Reply
Reverse Marketing For Residential Real Estate
This type of data could and should be controlled by the real estate industry.
The real estate industry has marketed to only one side of the real estate transaction, the homebuyer. A homebuyer can go to the Internet and see the inventory that is for sale. So most leads agents get are from homebuyers looking to relocate.
The Internet has done what no consumer advocate could ever do: It has reduced the distance between the consumer and the real estate expert to the point where the consumer is so much more informed, they don’t need the expert as much as they used to.
Let do a “180”. What would the real estate industry look like if homebuyers were listed in a similar manner as the inventory of homes currently on the market? By marketing the homebuyer as a commodity to homeowners, the process of solicitation is reversed. The homeowner can now solicit the agent representing the homebuyer matching the desired criteria. This approach gives an added value to the homebuyer lead.
This is the concept behind the innovation that is called FindABuyerForMyHome.com. It is a database of homebuyers that homeowners can search with their home’s criteria (price range, zip code, etc.) to view the buyer’s criteria and the buyer agent’s contact information working with that homebuyer. This system also matches all the FSBO’s on the Internet to the homebuyer’s criteria.
Let look at how this system would work if the broker had an exclusive. The scenario as follows:
ABC Realty has 50 agents and controls 5% of their market. The broker’s agents can now share the buyer pool for their office. This is a very powerful listing tool. When these agents are competing for a listing they are coming to the listing table showing the homeowner the buyers working with their office, not just talking about them. The agents will also be matching their buyers with the FSBOs in their market. Three really great things happen when the broker’s agents sell a FSBO.
1. They have removed a piece of inventory before it went on the MLS and will not be back on the market for many years.
2. They did not share the commission with there competition and
3. Agents will have a good reason to call FSBOs when there is a match. The agent is not asking to list they are asking to show the FSBOs home.
Also If the FSBO decides to list with a broker he will most likely list with the broker that showed it the most.
The buyer pool would be matched with all the in-house listings. Increasing in-house sale
The brokers website now attack homeowners looking for buyers.
Expired Listings can now be matched with the buyer pool and given specific information about the buyers working with the broker’s office.
A special focus on this business model for reverse marketing provides a perspective on the long-term affects of this strategy — and its exciting potential. Clearly an area that should attract much interest because of its high payoffs from relatively low investment, reverse marketing is an idea whose time has come: the imaginative approach of tomorrow, as put into practice by innovative professionals today.
Lance | Nov 3, 2007 | Reply
What is the best way of sorting through and organizing some of the Planning Alerts data?
Cape Number Plates | Nov 5, 2007 | Reply
I’d love to see more sites like this. Unfortunately in the UK the companies who own the data seem to want to hold on to it. We need to be more forward thinking and give stuff away – the ordinance survey map data is a prime example, as is the post office database or UK postcodes. Both cost a fortune to license.
Cape Number Plates | Nov 5, 2007 | Reply
….and in reply to the anonymous post above. I think this site would work in the UK. It’d be great if you could register your objections online etc. Could save councils thousands of pounds each year.