WSJ: How Real Estate Uses Big Data to Track Clients

A Wall Street Journal article last May how some major real estate companies like Sotheby's are partnering with a new crop of data analytics companies to identify and target prospective home buyers and sellers using public records.

Sitting in bed at 1:40 a.m. one morning last November, Jon Hoefling was thinking about selling his 4,300-square-foot home in Morgan Hill, Calif. While browsing Facebook on his phone, he clicked on a real-estate ad offering to estimate his home’s value. His future listing agent, who paid for the ad, was waiting.

Mr. Hoefling, the 50-year-old owner of an office-furniture resale company, had been targeted for the ad—along with 1,500 others in California’s Silicon Valley area—by an algorithm that identified him as a likely home seller. The telltale signs: Mr. Hoefling has lived in the home for more than 15 years, and his home’s market value is high for the area. Most important, his youngest son will soon leave for college. Empty nesters might as well wear a bull’s-eye.

Sotheby's in Washington, DC., got help from Wealth-X, a data analytics company, to find a buyer for a $9 million condominium in the wealthy Georgetown neighborhood by targeting high-income empty nesters who live in houses assessed at more than $4 million. Since the condo had lots of wall space, they got more specific in their targeting by focusing on art collectors.

Fascinating? Spooky? You can read the entire article at http://on.wsj.com/1VAyzeK.