Property's second innovation wave - it's all about accessibility

by Jessica Christiansen-Franks, CEO & Founding Director

For the best part of a decade city makers have been hearing about “innovation”, “digital transformation” and “disruptive technologies”, and how these movements are, and will continue to, shape our industry. 

As an urban-designer-turned-tech-CEO, I’m often asked to weigh in on these changes but it strikes me that they are commonly misunderstood. 

When it comes to property data, we have gone through - and perhaps felt fatigued by - the ‘first wave’ of this transformation: the sudden and profound access to new information. But in my view we are now entering the ‘second wave’: where it is the accessibility of information that is the most transformational. 

‍Property's second innovation wave - it's all about accessibility

Think about it like this. One of our most commonly used pieces of urban information: the aerial photo. Twenty years ago, as a young Landscape Architect, aerial photos were a nice-to-have in my career. And you only stumbled upon them if you had a client that happened to have access to a helicopter (!), or someone had commissioned an extremely expensive flyover. As an industry we were making lots of physical form context decisions without this (now) core piece of information. 

Then various private companies started making aerial imagery available, and our industry started noticing and using them. As practitioners we spent many-an-hour panning around the Google Earth maps, and were delighted when historic information became available. The images might not have been a high enough quality to use in a report, but we could suddenly get an enormous amount of information with a few clicks to inform our contextual analysis. 

And now, in 2024, the quality, accessibility, and recency of this resource has increased dramatically, and therefore so has the way we use them. Today, 78% of town planners will not undertake a site visit without first looking at an aerial photo, and many are accessing aerial imagery whilst on site. 

This transition isn't just true of aerials, other technologies have experienced the same: digital drafting systems; 3D fly throughs; even on-street parking systems: the first wave was very technically capable but complex. And the second wave brought simple, intuitive, easy to use alternatives, enabling these systems to reach the masses. 

‍Why shouldn’t community data be more easily accessible?

This is the opportunity we now have with lifestyle data. Our industry has spent the last 10 years getting comfortable with the concept of digital community data. Between consultants, in-house data teams, and various tech platforms, our industry now has extensive capabilities in providing deep dives into different aspects of local communities. 

But has it got easier to find what you need? 

If you’ve got $30,000 and 4 weeks to wait for your comprehensive analyst report, then yes, maybe you’re finding it easier. But if you’re;

• trying to be more informed before a site visit,  
• want to include a night time economy snapshot in a tender, or
• need to check last month’s trade area before meeting with local traders….

.... If you’re trying to do any of the daily tasks that place makers do, then you’re certainly ready for the second community data wave: a series of tools that are

• immediately available everywhere,
• provide real time data,
• enable you to explore without paying, and
• are beautiful and intuitive to navigate. 

Neighbourlytics’ has made lifestyle data easy and accessible

We spent the last 7 years building a (pretty incredible) data ingestion and analytics system to create real-time lifestyle reporting. But we were doing it ‘by request’:

About 10 months ago, we realised we had the technical capability to compute our data sets nationally, every month. So we did - nation wide lifestyle data created monthly. 

And we rebuilt our platform, and our whole business model around this notion: how can we make lifestyle data the new ‘aerial imagery’? The resource that is so intuitive and easy to access, that you check it out while on a site visit, or cast it to your meeting room screen to reference mid-meeting. 

And best of all, it has allowed us to work on a new ‘always on’ model:

‍5 things our customers are saying

In the 2 months since going live, more than 2,000 Australian place managers have accessed monthly lifestyle data for more than 9,300 locations. Here's what they're saying about it:

1. “Pulling this information together used to take us hours, now the information is just there when I log in. I screenshot it straight into my report” (Build to rent Development Manager)
2. “These tools give me instant visibility of anywhere I need to see, so I can easily scope our targeted research and spend my budget better” (National research manager, Nationwide asset owner)
3. Our team previously spent 4-6 months doing surveys to receive 400 good responses to ~15 questions. [Your platform] answers many of those in far more detail – on a more robust data set – at the blink of an eye.” (Place Strategy consultant working on place revitalisation projects)
4. “Other tools are designed for analysts, but this is so simple even I can use it” (Retail Centre Community Manager)
5. "I created my account just before my site visit, I don't know why I was wasting so much time on Google maps before." (Town Planning Consultant)

Number 5 is my personal favourite. Sorry aerial photos, you might be about to be displaced (only joking, we have aerials in our tools too).

Navigating the second innovation wave

As we navigate this second wave of innovation in property data, the focus has clearly shifted towards accessibility and Neighbourlytics is on a mission to make lifestyle data easy to access for better decision-making. By simplifying complex data and providing intuitive tools, we’re empowering placemakers to gain deeper insights, faster and more efficiently than ever before.

After working with Australia's most successful place managers, we know the future of urban planning is not just about having data, but about making that data work for you - instantly and effortlessly.

Join Neighbourlytics and create your free account today.

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