Whether you’re an agent, investor/developer, urban planner or homebuyer, investing in real estate is a massive decision. After all, big dollars are on the line, while sales price and interest rate alone are not enough to determine whether an investment is viable. One only needs to look to the old adage of “location, location, location” to know that a real estate investment is about so much more than the property.
Vincent-Charles Hodder, Gabriel Damant-Sirois and Colin Stewart have always appreciated that motto. The three friends met in graduate school where they studied urban planning and commiserated on the fact that there’s tons of data on cities that isn’t utilized during the planning and development process. The friends-turned-urban-planners-turned-data-scientists launched Local Logic with that goal in mind: to provide insights on locations that can be used to compare and contrast investments and increase ROI.
“They realized that many developers were making decisions largely on intuition and gut feeling, without having the objective data to effectively quantify and justify their investments from a risk-reward standpoint,” says Pierre Calzadilla, executive vice president of growth at Local Logic.
The Montreal-based location intelligence provider now helps anyone with a real estate touchpoint understand the intricacies of that asset’s location. It does this by incorporating more than 75 billion data points that inform 18 location scores across 250 million properties in the U.S. and Canada. These unique scores quantify everything from noise to transit, school quality and even access to wellness amenities.
Mitigating Risk
In a way, Local Logic builds a “digital twin” for all the locations it maps. Data and AI allow the company to interpret a built world, predicting macro development patterns and outlining the micro intricacies of each neighborhood. This information is presented through webtools, APIs, one-click reports and a data analytics platform. The decision-maker is then left with the best, most accurate information they need to make an educated assessment and mitigate their risks.
And those risks can be hefty.
For commercial real estate investors, there could be tens of millions of dollars on the line. Potential homeowners could sink their entire nest egg into a house, while signing up for a 30-year loan. A real estate agent’s business could be made or broken based on their recommendations. And a city planner? Their actions often shape the permanent structure of cities, sometimes for decades – even centuries – to come.
“By providing objective, quantifiable data and metrics, developers could optimize and improve the decisions they were making and better understand the effect they have on the cities they’re a part of,” Calzadilla adds. “Local Logic’s accurate, real-time data seeks to empower the public and private sectors to understand and respond to the needs of citizens — creating long-term value and more equitable, resilient places to live.”
Giving the People What They Want
Part of any good investment is predicting how that investment is likely to grow over time. That’s why Local Logic’s proprietary AI-powered models also allow its users to get a sense of what a location or neighborhood may look like in two to three years. This gives investors powerful insight to maximize their investment, while urban planners can better understand what is currently valued by consumers. Ultimately, users are able to master their markets through Local Logic, regardless of their specific investment objective.
The company also offers convenience. Naturally, information on a location exists in many forms. The problem is gathering, discerning and analyzing that data, a painstaking process for even the most seasoned professionals.
“The company leverages AI through the data cleaning, processing and transformation processes to generate high-quality, relevant and accurate, actionable insights for its customer base,” Calzadilla explains. “It has also built technology to offer an unparalleled user experience through powerful search functionalities like multi-layer heatmaps, allowing its customers to deploy complex investment theses throughout any market in the U.S. and Canada.”
ATTOM is happy to be part of the solution, offering valuable property data that help inform Local Logic’s metrics.
“Our confidence in ATTOM’s school and U.S. neighborhood data allows us to free up time for our engineering and machine learning teams so they can focus on other efforts,” Calzadilla continues. “This data helped us accelerate our entry into the U.S. market.”
Calzadilla says the decision to partner with ATTOM was an easy one. He appreciated the company’s efficient delivery mechanisms, industry-leading U.S. neighborhood boundary coverage, and the team’s ease and flexibility.
ATTOM is honored to be a part of Local Logic’s U.S. expansion and looks forward to supplying invaluable property data for its current and future users.
