Consumers talk, think, and act at the neighborhood (i.e. hyperlocal) level.
It’s no surprise that the most successful agents, brokerages, and property technology companies have neighborhood level marketing strategies.
But real estate professionals who try to implement hyperlocal marketing strategies know first hand what LiveBy discovered in the late 2010’s: neighborhood level data is really hard to do.
To solve this problem, smart real estate professionals typically turn to a real estate data provider.
But real estate data providers have a dirty secret — not all their data is created equal.
Quality varies drastically between providers.
This matters because success in the hyperlocal game depends on one crucial element: the quality of your boundaries.
Before we can explore neighborhood boundary quality, we first need to define what it is.
What’s a neighborhood boundary?
A neighborhood boundary is simply the map outline of a neighborhood.
You’ve seen them when searching areas on a map for everything from directions to property searches. Below are examples from Philadelphia and New York City.
Boundaries come in all different types — there are zip codes, city boundaries, subdivisions, school districts, and public school attendance areas, to name a few.
Without boundaries, you can’t make hyperlocal market reports or display neighborhood data for a listing on websites.
You’d have to resort to displaying data at the zip code level, which isn’t hyperlocal.
Does the number of neighborhood boundaries matter?
If your data provider doesn’t have the neighborhood for you, then your hyperlocal marketing strategy becomes difficult if not impossible to execute:
- What neighborhood market report will you feature in your direct mail campaign you can’t make a report for that neighborhood?
- How will you create a neighborhood level ad if you can’t get market stats for it?
- How will you feature insights for a neighborhood on listing if you don’t have that neighborhood?
- How will you be able to promote a hot, new neighborhood if you can’t make deliverables for it?
Simply put, the more neighborhoods you have access to, the more successful you’ll be at hyperlocal marketing.
How does boundary number and quality set LiveBy apart?
We at LiveBy have mapped over 99,000 neighborhoods and 17,000 micro neighborhoods mapped with more being added monthly.
This amounts to:
- Up to 3.5x more neighborhood boundaries than our nearest competitors
- Micro neighborhood coverage of 125% to 400% more than our main competitors
- Millions of API calls per day
What sets LiveBy apart isn’t just the breadth of our data but the care and expertise behind it.
We have a dedicated GIS (geospatial) team tirelessly mapping, adjusting, unifying, and enriching boundaries. This enables us to feature:
- The largest hyperlocal boundary catalogue in the US and Canada
- Precise and updated boundaries with a short turnaround time for new, custom, and updated boundaries
- Comprehensive and annually updated school attendance boundaries
LiveBy doesn’t just collect data — We enrich it, unify it, and ensure it’s ready to help real estate professionals make informed, hyperlocal decisions.
Note: Compared to our competitors, we don’t exceed the boundaries provided by the US Census. This is because US Census Data is publicly availailable to all people.Therefore, it’s not possible to get more census data.
Beyond Neighborhoods: Data Layers by Type
While neighborhoods are at the heart of what we do, over the years we’ve expanded our offerings to include a wide range of data layers.
Here’s a closer look at the boundaries we provide:
| Layer Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Communities | Boundaries of hamlets, villages, towns, cities, and census-designated places. |
| Districts | Large boundaries that often encompass smaller neighborhoods, primarily in metropolitan areas, with names including directional or locational indicators like “Central Austin” or “Northwest Dallas.” |
| Neighborhoods | Geographically bound areas with shared social, historical, or legal identities, defined by city data, multiple sources, or analytical methods. |
| Micro Neighborhoods | Smaller polygons within broader neighborhood boundaries, offering more granular insights, such as Judge’s Hill within Downtown Austin. |
| Subdivisions | Multi-parcel land allotments defined by local municipalities or county governments, including diverse land uses. |
| ZIP Codes | Polygon representations of USPS service areas, identifying delivery zones associated with specific post offices or metropolitan stations. |
| School Districts | Geographic representations of Primary, Secondary, and Unified School District coverage areas, showcasing local public educational zones. |
| School Attendance Areas | Specific boundaries defining areas served by individual schools, used to assign students to schools. These boundaries are not always available and often exclude charter, magnet, or alternative schools. |
Work with LiveBy
Our mission has always been to empower people with the best possible insights into their communities, and we’re just getting started.
Whether you are ready to kickstart your hyperlocal marketing or need boundary data to power your tech, we are here to help. Click here to book a demo!
