We know where we are by looking at a map, whether it’s a dog-eared atlas stashed in the glove compartment of the family sedan, or a big poster of the constellations taped to the bedroom ceiling of a star-struck 10-year-old.
Maps locate us, ground us. They tell us our position relative to every other place.
Maps also show us how to get from point A to point B, from Chicago to a truck stop on old Route 66, from a Florida launching pad to a 5-mile-wide crater on Mars.
Of course, maps are a tried-and-true tool of the real estate trade. What potential home buyer hasn’t been given a map with the agent’s name and phone number on the cover and the location of three potential homes circled on the inside?
As much as we like the old-fashioned kind that we can study, handle, and even make a lame attempt to fold, maps are stepping out of their traditional boundaries. Maps aren’t just showing us on paper where we are or how to get from here to there. In particular, computer maps are now being used in the real estate industry to determine where we will live, work and shop in the future.
“Maps are location, location, location,” said Mark Donovan, a researcher and geographer who uses computer maps to find the best places for new shopping centers and other buildings for the Prime Group, a Chicago developer. “Maps are an obvious and efficient way to look at the real estate world.”
Maps have evolved far beyond the multifolded street diagrams that real estate agents use to guide their customers. Once computerized, the map can easily be changed and manipulated. That also means important information can be charted on it.
For instance, computers soon will be able to quickly locate a home buyers’ three top choices on a map. But those points may also include vital details about the property, such as the makeup of the area’s population, average annual spending per student at the local school, or how much a neighbor pays on his or her property tax bill.
Real estate company Koenig & Strey Inc., based in Wilmette, uses computer maps that include cost of living information to show home buyers moving to another city how the new place stacks up against their current town.
“You can get a column-by-column comparison showing the cost of living in each place,” said Tom Koenig, chief executive of the company. “People like it a lot. It helps them see how the place looks on a map and what their costs will be.”
More companies and consumers are creating their own maps with the assistance of computers. Sales of geographic information software, which topped $548 million last year, will reach about $1.5 billion by the year 2000, says Daratech Inc., Cambridge, Mass.
Some of the most advanced mapping technologies, generally referred to as geographic information systems, are being used by real estate companies to analyze potential development sites. In brief, demographic information, such as household income, is plotted on a map to find the best place, perhaps for a shopping center.
“This is powerful stuff. There are a ton of real estate applications,” said Susanne E. Cannon, an assistant professor of finance at DePaul University, who has written articles on mapping technologies and uses computer maps to teach her students about real estate.
Cannon likens today’s map-making process to the elementary school rite of creating those cherished salt and flour reproductions of the country.
“Remember in grade school, you did a map of the states and showed that the yellow ones were corn producing? It’s the same idea. With these computer maps, you might look for concentrations of people over 65 years old with incomes of $50,000 or more and color them red,” she said.
“On a map like that, you can see patterns much more quickly than if the data are in a graph or a table. That’s the whole point.”
Most agree the visual impact of a map is what makes the technology so intriguing.
Contemporary cartographers say maps can communicate an idea, impression or trend more quickly than a list of statistics.
“It’s remarkable how compelling maps are,” said Mary K. Ludgin, director of research at Heitman Capital Management, Chicago.
To analyze one of her company’s malls, for instance, Ludgin uses computer mapping software to plot the home addresses of shoppers so see can see just where they come from. She says that information, when compared to previous data, can be used to determine if shopping patterns are changing and if different stores might attract more patrons.
Though using a map to find a consumer may be new, the idea of using a map to find something certainly isn’t. Markings on cave walls made by primitive humans are thought by some archeologists to be the trails of animals being hunted. The Babylonians and Egyptians drew maps of surrounding land features on stone tablets.
The first scientific maps were developed by Ptolemy, a Greek scholar, in the first century A.D. These maps were based on the graphing of coordinates with latitudes and longitudes.
“Before that, it was sketchy and impressionistic. Maps were not geographically accurate,” said Bob Karrow, curator of maps at the Newberry Library, Chicago, which has an exhibition of road maps on display until Dec. 14.
Maps still are made by plotting coordinates. But often that basic location information is supplemented with much richer detail.
For example, Creative Sales/American Map Corp. in Wood Dale, a publisher known for its county maps, has a map that shows 500 buildings in Chicago’s Loop. Each building is identified by address and also with the name of the major tenant.
“If a real estate agent is looking for office space downtown, it’s a neat map,” said Paula Bregman, vice president of Creative Sales/America Map, where cartographers draw maps by hand.
Bregman adds, however, that the company’s maps are being gradually digitized and all will eventually be available on computer.
And that is the case with most maps today.
In 1990, the government released its so-called TIGER files. These are digital street files, the drawings of every street in the United States used by the census bureau to count heads.
About the same time the government files were released, personal computers had become fast enough and cheap enough to run complex graphics.
As a result, computer software developers started to create programs that could link census data to the government’s digital maps.
“This was a new tool that allowed you to visualize the nation and link extensive amounts of data. That had not been done before,” said Jim Stone, president of Geonomics Inc., a Boston company that helps retailers pick locations.
For instance, one of Stone’s clients is The Limited.
“They were trying to develop a system to visualize trade areas and enhance their store selection process,” Stone said.
As Stone explains, current customers were “geo-coded” or given longitude and latitude assignments based on their home addresses and then plotted on a map. Then the computer found people similar to current customers, say those with the same age and income range, and plotted them on the map. The spot that showed the highest concentration of potential new customers might make a good place for a new store.
Stone says a national retailer trying to decide where to open its first outlet can use the same mapping technology to find the cities with the highest concentrations of potential shoppers. In other words, the maps will show which cities and neighborhoods have the best chance of success.
Though retailers have crudely charted shopping patterns for years by sticking push pins in wall maps, Stone says computer mapping is replacing manual methods that involved some guesswork.
“Because things are more competitive now, you cannot go on gut feel. Some of these decisions are counter-intuitive. A gut feel can hurt you,” he said.
Computer maps also are being used on the Internet to speed that sometimes laborious process of locating and screening potential homes to buy.
Moore Data Management Services, Minneapolis, has established a Web site, called cyberhome, that uses mapping as its key navigational tool.
Users looking for a new home, say in Wheaton, can display a map of the area and then, as they say in map parlance, “drill down” to street level to see where those homes are actually located.
“Mapping is a natural fit when you are searching for a home,” said Howard Latham, vice president of marketing at Moore, which has about 88 percent of the local MLS listings on its Internet site.
Maps are also used to orient home buyers who peruse The Chicago Tribune Homes Web site which includes about 22,000 listings of homes for sale.
Users can pick a subsection of the county where they are interested in buying a house and call up a map of that area, according to Bill Swislow, Internet producer at the newspaper. Eventually, he says, users will be able to get street level maps of the properties in which they are interested.
As the sophistication of mapping improves, the cost of mapping software is decreasing dramatically. Systems that were $100,000 five years ago, now are available to companies for about $2,000, according to Scott Elliott of Wessex Inc., Winnetka, a company that specializes in making digital maps.
There currently are about 60 providers of mapping software which range from the very complex to the simple. The StreetFinder program, $49.95, from Rand McNally, Skokie, can chart an address and highlight local places of interest, like nearby shopping areas and schools.
Real estate watchers say most agents eventually will have lap-top computers that will perform mapping functions for their customers on the spot.
“That means you could see comparables on a map. It will be a part of every sales package just like the MLS listing,” said Koenig.
