Use case: Buyer alerts for new properties in specific school districts

When my wife and I were looking for our current house, our children were in middle and elementary school. We both attended public schools all the way through college and believe strongly in supporting public schools. There were many factors in our home selection, but we were sure which high school we wanted our kids to attend. This school, Grimsley High (Go Whirlies!), had just been ranked in the Top 100 high schools in the country and had all the AP and IB programs we wanted our kids to be able to choose from.

This home search was eight years ago, and there were not nearly as many choices for finding listing information online. We did get daily e-mail updates from our agent with information from the local MLS, except not all of the houses would send our kids to the schools we wanted. It didn't seem like there was a way to get just the current listings that belonged to the 'right' school zone sent to us. We would have to take those e-mails and that double check against a list of streets that the school district published, and occasionally be disappointed that a specific property in the e-mail wasn't going to work for us.

We found a great house. The kids are now off to college and this story has a happy ending. But all of this got me thinking. Many agents, brokers, brands, and portals have drip marketing newsletters and alerts. They range from seasonal greetings, quarterly market updates, and monthly lifestyle pages to daily or 'instant' property alerts. All of these have different purposes and appeal to different types of consumers, or to consumers at various points in time. Many of them are designed to 'keep in touch' or to stay 'top of mind' during the long periods when most people are not actively pursuing a transaction.

But in all of the time and technological improvements we have seen in the real estate industry since 2005, there are still almost no websites, brokers or agents who have the ability to send out automated listing updates based on the school attendance zones. This ability would have made my personal home search much more efficient and less stressful.