Location
Neighborhood Search for Home Buyers and Real Estate Investment - NeighborhoodScout.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| investor | €0.0 | round | |
| N/A | $570k | Seed | |
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
Location, Inc., operating as NeighborhoodScout, provides highly granular, location-based data and analytics for the real estate and investment sectors. The firm was founded in 2000 by Dr. Andrew Schiller, who developed the concept for NeighborhoodScout while pursuing his Ph.D. in geography at Clark University. His personal experiences with the challenges of relocating and finding suitable neighborhoods, combined with his academic background, directly informed the company's creation. Dr. Schiller's prior work as a scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and as Director of Science for The Nature Conservancy provided him with a strong foundation in data analysis and geographic information systems.
The company's primary offering, NeighborhoodScout.com, launched in 2002, is an online platform that provides detailed analytics for every neighborhood in the United States. The platform serves a diverse client base, including individual homebuyers, real estate investors, appraisers, mortgage bankers, and corporate clients such as those in insurance, retail, and security. Revenue is generated through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, with customers subscribing to access detailed reports and data. The company also generates income through advertising and referral fees from real estate agents.
NeighborhoodScout's core service is its comprehensive database, which contains over 600 data elements for every U.S. neighborhood, often at a block-group level of detail. This includes proprietary, nationally comparable data on crime risk, school performance, housing market trends, and demographics. The crime analytics are compiled from over 18,000 law enforcement agencies, using spatial algorithms to create accurate, address-level risk assessments for various types of crime. The platform's school ratings are based on a patented methodology that allows for the comparison of school quality across different states. For real estate analysis, the service provides data on property values, appreciation rates, and gross rental yields, excluding public housing to better reflect true market rents. A patented search technology allows users to find neighborhoods that match their specific lifestyle criteria or find comparable neighborhoods across the country.
Keywords: location data, real estate analytics, crime statistics, school ratings, demographic data, site selection, risk assessment, property investment, geographic information systems, market analysis