Location, Location, Location?

I’m a market researcher.  I’m also a business owner, wife, mother, daughter, sister, elder-caregiver, maid, cook, decorator, volunteer and real estate investor.   And apparently now, I’m a blogger….  In my spare time, I love to get away to our vacation property that we bought in 2007. Like many other second home buyers, we went through a lengthy and cumbersome process when entering into this purchase decision.  And as one would expect, the traditional real estate mantra of “location, location, location” entered into play when it came down to where we would feel the most relaxed and get the most use, for private time, family time and in sharing the home with friends.

• Beach – there’s no such thing as a “close” beach to Atlanta.  A six hour drive didn’t appeal to us as a prospect when we wanted to use this home on weekends and not just during the summer when school is out.
• Lake – we’re not really water people.  I didn’t want to be burdened with the added expectation that a boat and jet skis would inevitably follow.  I remembered the old adage that the two best days of boat ownership are the day you buy one and the day you sell it.  And being forced to spend a lot of my vacation time in a bathing suit, or even shorts, didn’t sound too relaxing to me and my thighs.
• Resort –I already live in a master-planned golf community as my primary home.  The idea of spending my vacations in a similar structured setting, with covenants, rules, guardhouse, stylized amenities, clubhouse and planned functions seemed a bit too formal for us. 

So we settled our search on the North Georgia Mountains.  This location seemed to fit our needs, being close enough to get to even on weekends when my son has Saturday morning soccer games, yet far enough away to feel like I am in heaven when I need it most.  It’s semi-centrally located between my husband’s out of state siblings so we are able to gather a little more often than we used to. Friends from Atlanta use it for quick getaways and I’ve even spent time up there alone when the four walls around my home office start caving in.

Interestingly, as I was embarking upon this adventure with my family, I was also conducting several second home/resort market research projects for developers who were taking advantage of the booming real estate market at the time.  One specifically wanted to find the appeal of property that would boast a large golf course, clubhouse and spa in a very secluded location.  Another wanted to interview buyers in one of their existing high-end master planned communities to see if they would buy a second home from the same developer and if so, what special amenities would they have to include.  

While I always try to separate the Me-Search from the Re-search, I found that my ability to relate to the clients through the eyes of a true prospective buyer lent itself to enhanced data gathering and ultimate analysis.  What I found most compelling in the various personal and professional research projects was the role that technology was playing in the decision process.  While it is not surprising to note the role that the Internet played in our ability to shop for a home from the comfort of our living room, I was quite surprised to find that the number one criteria for second home shoppers was the accessibility to cell phone coverage and the World Wide Web!  This initially struck me as very strange – I mean don’t people want to “get away” at their “getaway”?  But then I realized that each time we were getting out of our car to look at a home, each of my kids and my husband (OK, me too) would stand in the driveway and pull out our respective PDAs and cell phones.  If we had no coverage, we didn’t even go inside the home – we would get back in the car and go to the next house!  While that seemed a little silly and something I wouldn’t really admit to anyone at the time, I discovered in my formal research that we were not alone.  When asked what the most important aspects of a vacation home were to prospective buyers, this new take on “Location, Location, Location” rose to the top of the list in every market I surveyed!!  Having access to such technology significantly overshadowed the accessibility to amenities, an airport/highway and shopping or dining opportunities – variables that no doubt would have won the contest as recently as ten years ago.   Technology had become the new “Golf!” 

 My shocked developer clients were advised to quickly share this information with their land acquisitions department  –  and to arm each one of them with a Blackberry or I-phone.  My tongue in cheek advice was to instruct them to drive the countryside and when they got five bars on the meter, start looking for land on which to build a second home community!  A good market researcher will not let a client’s preconceived ideas keep them from finding out new, and sometimes surprising, twists from their research projects.  And a good market researcher will carefully weigh when the use of Me-search can actually benefit or add validity to a project. 

For us, we found a home on the side of a lovely mountain overlooking a gurgling creek.  We made sure that we all could get reception on our phones, regardless of the different carriers. And we put into the contract that we had to be able to get Internet access before we would close on the home.  Location, location, location….  What would be the “new golf” for your company or product?