PolicyMap is a new online service that was created by The Reinvestment Fund, a non-profit organization that funds neighborhood redevelopment. I read about PolicyMap on Future of Real Estate Marketing blog and thought it sounded like an interesting service. When I went to check it out, I was astonished by the amount of information and customization they offered.
Real estate investors or developers who need to do extensive demographic research should definitely check this site out. They offer more than 4,000 different demographic variables for which you can customize maps and reports. They cover the standard ones such as crime, income and so on, but they also have powerful ones you can’t find anywhere else, such as an estimation of a neighborhood's population in the year 2012 and many others I just don’t have space to mention.
All of this information does not come cheap, however.
They offer limited data and customization for free upon registration, but for the real goodies you have to be prepared to ante up. Their standard subscription starts at $200 a month, and they don’t even publish their premium subscription price. If you are a developer or real estate investor who does a significant amount of deals, though, I think their service is well worth the price. This is especially true if you have to put together presentations for money partners or others as part of your investments. PolicyMap offers data that would make your presentation much better, in addition to tools that should make gathering the data and putting into presentable format much easier.
Labels: investments , investors , real estate , real estate bus , real estate development
