For agents and brokers representing clients in urban areas, a windfall of new data may offer key information in city issues.
According to a Forbes report, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a Cambridge-based urban affairs think tank, recently published, in collaboration with PolicyMap.com, an interactive map called the Place Database.
Scott Beyer owner of The Market Urbanism Report, wrote that the Place Database features numerous data categories to be applied over a map of the entire U.S.
Agents and brokers can select a category, and then zoom in, to draw comparisons by state, metro, county, city, or in some cases, even down to the land parcel.
Beyer noted that the video provides a tutorial on how to use the map.
Data points included are median home values, property tax rates, vacancy rates, zoning codes, school district spending, and much more.
The map also details environmental data regarding the elevations, critical habitats and brownfield sites in different areas. It has policy-oriented data, too, such as the fiscal distress, or federal transportation spending received, by given cities.
“The map’s housing data is what interested me most, namely certain nuances,” Beyer wrote. “For example, aggregate housing costs, as measured here by percentage of household income spent on housing, is far higher in cities than rural areas – no surprise there. But when counting aggregate housing + transportation costs, the roles reverse, since rural America is more auto-dependent, meaning people are likelier to shoulder the burden of buying and maintaining cars. Of course, the income gap between urban and rural America also factors in here.”
Another data point includes building age.
According to the Place Database, homes in the Northeast and Midwest were far older, on average, than homes in the Sunbelt. In New York City proper, 51 percent of the housing units were built before 1950. In Phoenix, only 2.4 percent of homes were built before then, and nationwide the rate is only 18.4 percent.
