Lifestyle Search – What is it?

So what is lifestyle search? It’s the ability for consumers to find their “best places to live.” It enables users to submit lifestyle criteria and importantly allows them to prioritize the most important factors for their individual family’s needs. Once they submit the data the search will return results that highlight areas that best match their criteria based on the lifestyle priorities they defined. Using simple sliders they can also adjust the priority of their preferences to see how it changes the neighborhoods recommended.

Let’s use the Online Dating industry as an analogy here. Many of these sites claim to help singles find their ideal match, but they are unsuccessful. Why? Because they are using only superficial measures to gauge compatibility and ultimate happiness. Sure, everyone would like to date or even marry the best looking guy or gal in the room, but that doesn’t usually work. Ultimately it takes more fundamental compatibility about the values you possess and the activities you enjoy to create a long-term match. Much like dating sites that only use superficial measures like number of bedrooms and baths are not going to satisfy a consumer’s need to find the right long-term “match” for their home selection.

Lifestyle search can help find the right home match for a consumer by using factors that are more fundamental to the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the homeowner.

Lifestyle Search – Delivers the other two legs of the “stool”

Lifestyle search shouldn’t stop there though. Once the consumer has defined the areas they are interested in the search tool should also help them conduct a listings search. It will also allow the consumer to drill down on the details of each area and display the area boundaries on a map. It will even create a “heat map” showing the result matches customized to the consumer’s interests.

Lifestyle search can help consumers evaluate the fit with an area based on many factors like family, fun, school, culture, median home price, home ownership, area density, population growth, employment, home sales trends, home price trends, places of worship, commute type, golfer’s paradise and convenience to everyday needs. The lifestyle search can also factor in socially generated content including reviews and ratings, so there are several inputs not just pure demographic data.

Again, much like dating sites such as eHarmony, the success rate for finding the right match is much higher when a home search is conducted with a more exhaustive set of criteria.

Lifestyle Search – A Broker Example

While I have always loved the concept of lifestyle search, I did have some concerns that the actual execution of the idea may be cumbersome and difficult for consumers to use. I was heartened to see a couple of examples that appear to be really easy to use for consumers.

In this rough example of a soon to be released tool on the EXIT Realty website, a consumer simply uses the slider bars to assign relative importance to the factors of “fun, hip and friendly,” “family-friendly,” “excellent schools” and “cultural activities” as well as desired home price range. Apparently website owners can choose which of the 40+ factors they would like to highlight based on the unique needs of their local marketplace.

While this is not a final design by any means, it does provide a rough idea of how lifestyle search may be applied to a brokerage site using lifestyle factors important to the local market.

According to Susan Harrison, SVP Web Development and Franchise Support for EXIT Realty.

"The decision to enhance EXIT Realty’s corporate and broker websites with Lifestyle Search is parallel to our company's philosophies: First and foremost, we seek to enhance our Agent's success factor through intelligent innovation. By launching Lifestyle search, we take a leading role in transforming home-search industry-wide while delivering the information and decision-making tools that today's real estate customers need and desire.

By providing these tools, we attract and retain more potential customers to our websites and through that, deliver more qualified, educated prospects to our Agent population.

Next, we become the go-to online home search destination – everything in one place.

This lifestyle functionality will streamline and simplify the home-search process for customers eliminating the need for endless, frustrating hours of data hunting on the Web.

Our local websites will contain all of the information necessary for clients to find their very best place to live. At EXIT Realty, we innovate; the launch of Onboard’s Lifestylebased home search are a true testament to that innovation."

Customizable Search Criteria

Just like the consumers using lifestyle search, each city, town and even neighborhood likely requires its own set of search criteria deemed to be the most important in the local area. For example, homes located in Naples, Florida may require a slider for the proximity to the waterfront or those in Vermont may require a slider for the proximity to ski resorts. Urban locations may require sliders for proximity to public transportation or proximity to public parks or cultural attractions, for example.

Properly developed lifestyle search tools allow the local expert to determine the most salient lifestyle factors to be used to make the tool as relevant as possible.

The tool shown above allows a MLS, broker or website owner to determine what lifestyle factors they would like to offer to their clients.

Once the consumer enters their information and hits “recommend neighborhoods,” they get the results shown below. The consumer receives a simple answer. What they don’t see are the complicated underpinnings of the data that has helped derive a set of recommended neighborhoods for them. For a tool like this to work effectively, it needs to be based on an intelligent method for organizing, categorizing and weighting the information. Algorithms, like this, take years to perfect. In fact, the tool used to build this example is based on 15 years of aggregated data.

Once consumers review the recommended neighborhoods, they can click to receive more neighborhood details and review properties recommended by the broker who is hosting the lifestyle search. This mock-up demonstrates how a Lifestyle Listings search can be seamlessly integrated with the site’s current IDX vendor so that consumers can continue to drill down on properties once they find a community they are interested in.

It has been proven that sites that include this type of rich search experience will engage potential home buyers at a much deeper level than what a simple IDX search can achieve. The longer the stay on your site, the better your search engines rankings will become.

The search criteria used by consumers can also be tracked and can be used to focus content on the site about the topics most interesting to consumers. It can also be used to continue to refine the lifestyle search factors offered on the site over time.

Lifestyle Search – An MLS Example

MLS Consumer Websites can also benefit from lifestyle search. By definition, MLS consumer sites are usually used before a consumer has engaged with a broker or agent. Consumers are using the site to conduct research to educate themselves about the market. Home buyers and sellers value these sites because they believe they have the most comprehensive and up-to-date information (which, of course, is true!). They like the fact they can connect with a REALTOR® once they have narrowed down their home preferences.

Through the consumer research we have conducted about MLS consumer websites throughout North America, we have heard loud and clear that consumers really want lifestyle search functionality. For those that are moving from one side of the city to the other, they would like to use lifestyle search after they have found a home they like to be sure the neighborhood works for them as well.

For those that are relocating to a new area, it’s helpful to sift through all of the neighborhoods available to them to make their home search process more efficient and productive.

MLSs can use lifestyle search to steer consumers back to a REALTOR®- controlled site by offering more helpful and interesting information than third-party sites. The industry has a chance to “OWN” a very important piece of information strongly desired by consumers.

MLSListings, a progressive MLS in the heart of Silicon Valley is going to be launching a lifestyle search in early 2011.

According to Jim Harrison, CEO of MLS Listings:

"I am an action-oriented leader and I thrive on implementing innovative solutions that create value." At MLSListings, we're focused on delivering significant value to our membership and to the consumer."

"With so many online clients already recognizing MLSListings as a leading local real estate destination, reinforcing that value and creating trust with information and tools that today's consumers want/need will directly impact our ability to deliver business to our members and enhance their success; hence, our decision to go with Onboard."

"We’re taking what we do best and marrying that with Onboard’s expertise to create a revolutionary Lifestyle-based home search on www.MLSListings.com. In early 2011, our customers will be able to find their best place and property all in one place. We’re excited to work with together and do something extraordinary."

We have written before about how much consumers want as much intelligence about the real estate market as they can get. They LOVE market statistics and they love lifestyle information as well. The industry has made great strides in offering rich, yet easy to understand statistics programs. Now we have a chance to step up on lifestyle search as well.

Lifestyle Search and the MLS Cloud

MLSs across the country have come together to jointly promote their consumer-facing websites to consumers via the website called MLSCloud.com. This site features listings from nearly 700,000 agents from around the country. It is a great resource for consumers trying to conduct research across the country.

While this is a great resource for consumers, what if it could include something like this? What if MLSs from across the country could collaborate and help consumers find the right place to live from a nationwide search?

And what if that search could include factors like the following to help consumers consider communities all over the United States? MLSs could band together to provide an extremely valuable resource to consumers.

Think about the entrepreneur figuring out where to locate her next start-up. How about the public company trying to evaluate locations for their new plant they’re opening in 2013? The MLS can play a vital role in helping locate not only individuals to their area, but companies as well.

The New York Daily News is just launching a lifestyle search. The example shown above is a rough mock-up to demonstrate the concept. They will be using lifestyle search to help those interested in living in New York City to find just the right spot for their individual needs.

Steve Lynas Senior Vice President (Digital) at the New York Daily News says:

"Lifestyle Search will be integral to our coming launch of a new site that will give New York real estate consumers a clear guide to the best places to live in a city that can be overwhelming,"

“New York City is the most densely populated city in the US with around 8.4 million people in a land area of only 305 square miles; there are 19 million in the whole metropolitan area. Most people don't associate themselves with a handful of zip codes or boroughs - they connect with the energy, amenities and overall vibe of hundreds of micro-neighborhoods. These are small areas, sometimes only a few blocks long. That’s why we are producing a website to offer true neighborhood searches according to lifestyle criteria.”

"This neighborhood-level Lifestyle Search from Onboard gives us the ability to quickly assess recommended local neighborhoods that meet a user’s defined lifestyle and investment criteria. From there, they can go on to view the properties available. It is an innovative way to look at home search in a new type of real estate destination, and an excellent resource for consumers."

This is the first installment of a five part series called "The Lifestyle Search Opportunity." This white paper was written and researched by WAV Group, Inc.

To learn more about WAV Group, please click here.

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