Real Estate Technology
PR Newswire | January 09, 2024
Nestfully, an innovative public search portal in the real estate industry powered by some of the country's largest MLSs, today announced a collaboration with Local Logic, a leading location intelligence software provider. Local Logic's advanced location and demographic insights are now directly integrated into Nestfully's platform, enhancing the home search experience for both consumers and real estate professionals.
Nestfully connects consumers directly with the most accurate and up-to-date listing information from the MLS and is elevating its service offerings by integrating two of Local Logic's flagship products - Local Content and Local Demographics. These additions will empower homebuyers with deeper insights into potential properties, covering aspects such as neighborhood characteristics, local services, transportation options, and detailed demographic data.
"Our collaboration with Local Logic marks a milestone for Nestfully," said Amit Kulkarni, Bright MLS Chief Marketing Officer. "Integrating Local Logic's advanced location and demographic insights directly into Nestfully introduces new value to agents and homebuyers and brings them a new innovative tool that enhances the homebuying search."
Local Logic's Local Content product offers 18 distinct location scores across services, transportation, and character, along with details on nearby points of interest and school data. This user-friendly and customizable interface ensures brand consistency while enriching the user's understanding of a home's lifestyle and location characteristics.
Local Demographics provides a comprehensive view of neighborhood dynamics, including income, employment statistics, population demographics, education levels, housing data, and more. This feature is designed for fast implementation and consistent site design, allowing real estate companies to focus on their core business while offering valuable insights to modern home seekers.
"Nestfully's innovative approach to real estate search aligns seamlessly with our mission at Local Logic," said Vincent-Charles Hodder, Co-founder and CEO of Local Logic. "By infusing our comprehensive location intelligence into their platform, we're not just enhancing the homebuying experience; we're reshaping it. This partnership reinforces our position as the go-to provider of neighborhood insights, benefiting both real estate professionals and homebuyers."
About Nestfully
Nestfully delivers millions of residential property listings and a wealth of information to home buyers and sellers from the definitive source used by real estate pros – the MLS. Consumers get access – at no charge – to a search experience that has no advertisements, just home listings and seamless connection to local agents and brokers who know the properties and markets the best. Nestfully was designed, engineered and launched by several of the nation's leading MLSs including California Regional MLS and Bright MLS, with REcolorado, BeachesMLS and Miami REALTORS® as participants.
About Local Logic
Local Logic is a location intelligence platform that digitizes the built world for consumers, investors, developers, and governments – delivering unrivaled clarity and actionable insights capable of creating more sustainable, equitable cities. With more than 85 billion unique data points – the largest unique location data set in the U.S. and Canada – the platform creates a digital twin of cities, quantifying the built world and offering predictive, precise analytics to inform the present and future of over 250 million individual addresses.
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Real Estate Investment
PR Newswire | January 11, 2024
Cohen & Steers, Inc. announced today the launch of the Real Assets Compass, an interactive tool focused on real estate allocations designed to help financial advisors and institutional investors improve portfolio risk-return profiles. Using the firm's Capital Market Assumptions for the next 10 years and 30 years of historical data, the Real Assets Compass ("the Compass") compares historical and expected returns and volatility of traditional portfolios of only stocks and bonds with those of a more diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds and listed and private real estate.
Cohen & Steers believes that many investors are under-allocated to real estate despite the well-documented benefits of the asset class, including its strong performance and potential to enhance risk-adjusted returns. These investors include those across a range of profiles, from self-directed investors to those investing with financial advisors or family offices.
Cohen & Steers' analysis, utilized in the Real Assets Compass, suggests that adding real estate to an investor's portfolio of stocks and bonds can improve its total return and risk-reward profile. The Compass can help advisors demonstrate the impacts of adding real estate to a portfolio and address client questions about allocating to real estate. The potential benefits of a real estate allocation apply to an array of investor styles, ranging from those more conservative seeking income or lower risk to those seeking growth or higher returns.
Joe Harvey, Chief Executive Officer & President, said:
"The Real Assets Compass is the latest example of Cohen & Steers' commitment to innovation and providing advisors with the tools necessary to build better portfolios and educate clients around the benefits of private and listed real estate allocations."
The Cohen & Steers Real Assets Compass will enable financial advisors to:
Build customized investment profiles based on general risk tolerance, investment objective and portfolio size
View a portfolio allocation with both listed and private real estate based on that profile
Adjust the total real estate allocation and the mix between listed and private real estate
Forecast the impact of an allocation to real estate on the risk/return profile of a portfolio through a clear comparison to a traditional stock/bond portfolio
View resulting 10-year expected portfolio growth in dollars and quantitative performance and risk metrics, as well as the past-30-year return profile
Download easy-to-understand reports to review with clients
Jon Cheigh, Chief Investment Officer, said:
"We believe real estate should be a strategic, long-term allocation for most investors. Yet too few investors recognize that allocations to real estate can deliver strong absolute and relative returns at lower risk. As a result, we created our Real Estate Advisory Services, which aim to help institutional clients allocate to listed and private real estate based on where we are in the market cycle. These capabilities, along with the Real Assets Compass, will play an instrumental role in Cohen & Steers' work to close the education gap that exists in investors' understanding of the power of real estate allocations."
The launch of the Real Assets Compass follows the appointments of Rich Hill as Head of Real Estate Strategy and Research in September 2022 and Jeff Palma as Head of Multi-Asset Solutions in November 2021, to grow Cohen & Steers' portfolio allocation and research capabilities. The Compass tool can be used by institutional investors in conjunction with the portfolio allocation and real estate strategy insights produced by the firm.
About Cohen & Steers.
Cohen & Steers is a leading global investment manager specializing in real assets and alternative income, including real estate, preferred securities, infrastructure, resource equities, commodities, as well as multi-strategy solutions. Founded in 1986, the firm is headquartered in New York City, with offices in London, Dublin, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore.
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Real Estate Advice
PR Newswire | October 25, 2023
Zillow is launching a big update to the look and feel of for-sale property listings on its website, improving home shoppers' experience with a more intuitive and simplified layout.
The enhanced design of for-sale property listings on Zillow.com offers a wider, single-scroll format, making it easier for home shoppers to find key information, such as square footage, the Zestimate feature, lot size and home type. The new layout also introduces a media section at the top of the page that better showcases photos and 3D tours. By clicking on a photo, the media section expands, providing a full-page, magazine-style layout for seamless navigation through the rest of the home's photography.
"The new design delivers a fun and efficient way to browse homes on the Zillow website, making it easier for home shoppers to navigate and process information," said Jenny Arden, chief design officer at Zillow. "We introduced a wider layout for images, larger fonts for the most important facts and a clearer articulation of what makes the home special to help our users quickly understand if the home is right for them."
Zillow's app updates: Navigate with ease and simplify financing with the Home Loans tab
In addition to the redesign on the Zillow website, for-sale property listings on the Zillow app (iOS) are also receiving an update. This new look minimizes excessive scrolling by allowing users to more easily find the information that matters the most to them, whether that's home facts and features, a cost calculator or the Zestimate history.
When viewing a for-sale listing on the app, users will see a new look that presents the home details categorized into sections such as "What's Special,"' "Market Value," "Monthly Cost" and "Neighborhood." Users can click into particular sections of interest to find more details. This new look will be available before the end of the year on the Zillow iOS app.
Zillow is also introducing a new "Home Loans" tab on the Zillow app to help shoppers become buyers. Users can now easily figure out their budget, connect with a lender, get prequalified with Zillow Home Loans℠, and track their loan status — all in one place.
"Financing is a critical part of the home-buying process, and 60% of buyers say setting their budget is their first step when buying a home. With this update, we're helping the millions of people browsing the Zillow app better understand what they can afford within their budget and see a clear path toward getting the mortgage they need," said Matt Daimler, senior vice president of product at Zillow. "We're already seeing an impact: Customers are saying it's easier than ever to access and use our financing tools and get prequalified with Zillow Home Loans."
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