We're excited to introduce Realosophy’s revamped Neighbourhood Match tool, our "eHarmony" for Toronto neighbourhoods. Thanks to the hard work of our awesome team, it's now better than ever. Check out our profile in the Toronto Star last week and let us know what you think of the new interface and user experience.
Neighbourhood Match, a online tool powered by proprietary Realosophy analytics, allows you to sort through over 170 GTA neighbourhoods based on what matters to you – budget, type of house, school quality, Tim Horton’s vs. Starbucks vs. indie coffee. Even better, we rank your neighbourhood results by the number of houses sold matching your criteria - giving you a better sense of the likelihood of you finding the home you need in that neighbourhood. For those of you familiar with our earlier version, you'll be happy to find that you can now filter your results by school quality, a key change.
We’re constantly looking out for new criteria to add to our tool so if you have some ideas about what you'd like to see, or even better, great data that better illuminates some aspect of Toronto’s neighbourhoods, drop us a line.
Thanks to the media’s love of all things real estate, we hear a lot of buzz about various Toronto neighbourhoods, but we don’t often get useful information about how to compare them or find good substitutes at a lower pricepoints. Neighbourhoods in Toronto’s fast changing inner burbs of North York, East York, Etobicoke and Scarborough are rarely detailed at all. All of which is why we created Neighbourhood Match.
The tool has been a hit with buyers relocating to Toronto from elsewhere (including the adorable Ruff family profiled in the Toronto Star story). It’s also popular with Torontonians keeping up with a fast-changing city as neighbourhood after neighbourhood becomes a contender – Leslieville, Mimico, Roncesvalles, Danforth Mosaic, Seaton Village. And for buyers who grew up in the inner or outer suburbs, lived in downtown neighbourhoods as uni students or worked in the core, Neighbourhood Match helps make the critical Toronto transition – after all, very few first-time buyers can afford to buy in The Annex they once rented in. Everyone needs options that work.
Neighbourhood Match is one of several proprietary tools and processes that make up our Realosophy Home Buying Method, which re-imagines the way that agents work with clients. The heart of our Method is a consulting – not sales – approach that aims to get every buyer into the right home in the right neighbourhood. The 10-Step Method is designed to help buyers avoid making common mistakes like buying in the wrong neighbourhood or outgrowing a house too quickly after buying – mistakes that can add up and reduce your financial wealth over time.
In an industry traditionally characterized by individuality (agents work for brokerages as independent contractors with little formal oversight) and a gate-keeping approach to information, building a brokerage like Realosophy isn’t for the faint of heart. But it’s a worthy endeavour – with our open approach to educating consumers and our focus on creating services that help us collectively deliver the best experience to clients each and every time, we’re able to delight consumers. And we’re able to empower progressive agents who are dissatisfied with the industry status quo and keep them doing the work they love (btw, Realosophy is currently looking for a great buyer agent to join our team). All of which keeps us excited about what we're doing.
Urmi Desai is editor of the Move Smartly blog and is responsible for Realosophy’s strategy and marketing. Realosophy researches Toronto neighbourhoods to help today's home buyers make smarter decisions. Try our innovative Neighbourhood Match tool to find the best Toronto neighbourhoods for you . Email Urmi
September 7, 2011
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