For most buyers, finding properties that satisfy both their wants and needs is no small feat. Luckily a new real estate platform, LandOnEarth, promises to make the home-search process much easier, bringing personalized home matches to buyers rather than the other way around. Keep reading to learn more about how the team at LandOnEarth is using ATTOM to fuel their business.
Searching for Properties on the Big Sites Can be Frustrating
According to recent data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 47% of buyers reported that the first step they took toward buying a home was looking at available properties online. Most of those buyers, undoubtedly, used the big property search portals while browsing.
However, according to Michele Combs, Vice President of Business Development at LandOnEarth, searching on those sites leaves a lot to be desired. Specifically, most of these portals put the majority of the property-finding workload on the home buyer rather than bringing decent matches to them.
“When a buyer goes to one of the big search portals, they choose their criteria, like bedrooms and bathrooms, and square footage. But then, they have to do the hard work of sorting through all of the properties that match that criteria and eliminating the ones that aren’t a fit,” she explains. “At the same time, that sales price criteria may eliminate homes that could be a good fit but are priced slightly higher than what they were looking to spend.”
In Combs’s experience, it’s an imperfect system, one that’s more focused on generating lead sales revenue for the property search sites themselves than helping buyers find a home that truly matches their lifestyle and personal needs.
Launching LandOnEarth to Put Buyers’ Preferences First Instead
Fortunately, the team at LandOnEarth has found a better way to connect buyers with their ideal properties. Founded in 2017 by real estate developer, Mario Corona, LandOnEarth functions more like a dating app than your standard property search portal.
The first step is to have potential buyers fill in a personalized match profile that includes information about themselves and their preferences for a new home. Each match starts with four very general questions, including a price range, the desired number of bedrooms and bathrooms, plus the number and ages of the people in the household. After this stage, the questions begin to get much more specific:
“The match profile identifies things like whether you’re a foodie who needs to be near high-end restaurants or if you’re someone who wants to be near a park so you can walk your pets,” Combs says. “The more information buyers fill in on their match profiles, the better their matches eventually become with our HomeMatchTechnology.”
After they have filled in enough information, LandOnEarth’s prospective buyers are given a further chance to make their preferences known. For this step, they’re shown a series of property photos that they can either like or dislike so the system learns their preferences.
“This process enables the platform and real estate agents to learn things about each buyer that they might not even notice themselves,” states Combs. “For example, let’s say they consistently favor photos of homes with white kitchen cabinets. As LandOnEarth evolves, we’ll have the ability to start uncovering matches with white kitchen cabinets sooner, which absolutely streamlines the search process.”
Once a prospective buyer has found a home that they’d like to go see in person, LandOnEarth notifies their agent or connect them with a trusted real estate professional who can help facilitate the rest of the transaction.
Using ATTOM to Create a More In-Depth Property Search Experience
In order to access this level of detail about the properties on their platform, the team at LandOnEarth knew that they would have to access data beyond what’s already offered by an area’s multiple listing service (MLS).
“Every MLS has different data fields and individual agents can fill out those fields in a unique way based on their understanding of the property. It’s really eye-opening how limited that information can be,” says Combs of the barriers imposed by relying on these systems.
With that in mind, they’re using property data from ATTOM to overcome those limitations. In particular, they’re combining public record information with census and points of interest data to create the proprietary datasets that fuel their app.
“The depth of ATTOM’s real estate data has been a really great fit for us because we’ve been able to create something that helps agents and consumers find homes that match the buyer’s lifestyle, explains Combs. “Our buyers are able to say things like, ‘This home is around the corner from a yoga studio, and I do yoga every day. It could be the one for me.’”
Scaling with ATTOM by Their Side
To date, LandOnEarth is available in four cities, including San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and San Francisco. According to Combs, the company is planning for rapid expansion in 2023, intending to bring the platform nationwide by the end of the year.
As they grow, Combs feels confident that ATTOM will continue to play a key role in providing the data that helps them provide such a unique tool for buyers and agents alike.
For the LandOnEarth team, ATTOM’s attitude toward their clients is what sets them apart from other data providers and what makes them such an essential ally as they move forward.
“They’ve been a great startup partner because they’re certainly capable of handling the aggregation and delivering the data on time, as promised,” she says. “But, it’s more than that. I feel like they care. They’re not just looking to gouge you. They want you to be successful.”
