Managing Real Estate with GIS

When answering real estate questions, location is one of the critical factors. Most of the sophisticated investment analysis and real estate administration needs require utilizing spatial or locational information stored in the form of maps and related data. GIS technology provides a variety of spatial analysis tools - including simultaneous display of different map layers, query of related tabular data, proximity analysis, and map overlays - that can be employed for planning and managing this sector effectively. The use of GIS helps in integrating a wide variety of data and in presenting all the information visually, thus providing a more presentable and appealing picture of the properties of interest.

Real estate development companies can use GIS for evaluating and analyzing key factors for urban modeling, land sales, property leasing and management, construction tracking, infrastructure planning and maintenance, and marketing. This paper emphasizes the use of GIS as a support tool for real estate development by defining the data needed and describing the supporting GIS applications.