4 smart ways to use location intelligence for property investment

With an industry mantra of “location, location, location”, it’s no surprise that location intelligence for property investment is among the most effective tools in the investor’s arsenal. 

In this article, we’ll explore four of the ways you can effectively use location intelligence to develop and optimise your real estate portfolio. 

Location intelligence for property investment 

Location intelligence will add real texture to your property searches, facilitate intuitive visualisation and much more. 

Here are just four of the many ways you can use location intelligence for property investment: 

1) Find properties that align with current portfolio 

Opportunities are everywhere in real estate, but most investors will end up specialising in specific types of investment properties. 

With location intelligence, you can conveniently combine datasets to identify properties with similar characteristics to those already in your portfolio. 

Periscope? also enables you to overlay census data onto your own corporate, secure version of Google Maps. Understanding the key traits of local demographics (e.g. age and socio-economic details) will help you predict the value of a future sale, or the rental rate you’re able to charge. 

This platform also enables you to add Council Tax band information to your calculation, which acts as a more reliable indicator of property type than house prices alone. 

2) Identify up-and-coming areas 

Success in property investment is all about staying one step ahead of the wider market. As such, the ability to see how an area is developing is integral to profitability. 

Location intelligence helps you visualise all the factors that indicate whether an area is on the up or not, such as: 

• House price trends 
• The opening of new, more exclusive shops and service providers 
• The age and education level of current occupants (also indicating future socio-economic trends) 
• Local crime rates 

With all this data at your fingertips, you can make more informed decisions about which areas are likely to generate a healthy return. 

3) Take account of new transport/housing infrastructure 

Another factor that can determine the viability of areas (for better or worse) is the introduction of new transport and/or housing infrastructure. 

Is a new, more upmarket housing development set to transform a once-dilapidated area? Is this development accompanied by new transport infrastructure and, if so, where will the major interchanges be situated? How will factors such as these impact on local house prices? 

Answering these questions with location intelligence should help you grasp where and when you should invest for maximum impact. 

4) Persuade investors with intuitive data visualisations 

If investing in partnership, or as part of an investment consortium, you need to make sure you’re all on the same page and in agreement regarding the choices you make. 

Trying to persuade other investors to back your decisions using raw data (or no data) is likely to cause confusion, and limit the extent of buy-in. 

Periscope? enables you to create intuitive, layered visualisations that help showcase value in a hugely accessible manner. 

For instance, you could: 

• Display property prices on your own digital map 
• Compare similar property types in different areas 
• Log local footfall, map transport interchanges and estimate drive-times 

Use location intelligence for property investment and optimise your portfolio with Periscope? from Newgrove; sign up for a free, 10-minute demo today. 

NEWGROVE is a leading expert in location analytics and customer insight. Our online platform - Periscope - enables our clients to analyse huge datasets from multiple sources, creating a visual business landscape which forms a powerful basis for strategic decisions.