RPR Commercial: Local Points of Interest

Looking for a commercial property resource that’s a one-stop-shop? RPR, the Realtors Property Resource, offers just the ticket. With RPR commercial, practitioners have access to 826K+ active listings and 56 million off-market properties to search, research and prospect. And there’s no extra cost, as RPR is part of your NAR Member dues.

That’s the big picture. However, RPR Commercial also offers lots of other little hidden gems of data. Just toggle to “Commercial” on the search bar, and open up the RPR Commercial Maps to find the “POIs”: Points of Interests.

Interested? Read on!

Simply search an area (ZIP code or specific address) and from that search result, choose the Map view (it’s the unfolded map icon, in the upper right.) Then click on the map data layer buttons to your right, the one labeled “POIs.”

Clicking it will open up the POI menu. From here you can choose what type of points of interest you want pinned. For example, to choose them individually, click “Banks” if you’re looking for banks, and so on. You can also use the Groupings buttons, to choose several points in a particular category.

Then click “Apply” and your map will populate and reveal those points. (Tip: they’ll appear as little black dots if you’re zoomed out on the map; zoom in with the map view plus “+” sign to reveal more details and icons.) This method is a really easy and smart way to search the area around a property to learn about nearby businesses.

The map will now display interactive map pins that you can click to see each place’s business name, address, number of employees, sales volume, industry and building square footage. POIs are a great tool for identifying competitors along with potential business partners. Users can also use the POIs to aid in property management, finding desirable business locations, discovering hospitality needs within a defined area, and much more.

The map Points of Interest offer all types of stats, info and data. But what can you do with them to help guide your clients? The possibilities are endless, and your creativity and ability to dig and apply them can really help you stand out. Here are three examples from RPR users how POIs can not only educate and impress clients, but showcase your market expertise.

Lease renewals: In this example, a convenience store is up for a lease renewal. Using the POIs, the user was able to pull financials on franchisees in nearby geographies. This information was then used to validate that the current location is more successful than other franchisees in neighboring geographies, based on higher sales volume. Doing research and being able to validate a higher lease proposal is perfect POI material!

Need for a business/business needs: A REALTOR^® represents an insurance company looking to open a new office. Using the POIs in RPR Commercial, this RPR user was able to not only scout out the competition from a sales volume perspective using the “Insurance” category, but was also able to determine a desirable area for the location based on proximity from the competition. They were also able to research and select an area that would be attractive to insurance agents, so they found a spot with appealing employee amenities, including restaurants, grocery stores and gyms. Win-win!

Hospitality investors: A REALTOR^® knows that their city has 35,000 hotel rooms, and that 2,500 more are under construction. They also know that it’s still not enough to keep up with demand and new attractions. Armed with local POI statistics, they were able to demonstrate to investor clients which areas and geographies needed hotels. They started by looking at nearby tourist attractions, then highlighted the annual sales volume of competitors, as well as how many employees are needed to successfully run a hotel. All of this homework and research was pulled from RPR POIs, and it convinced the investor clients to sign on and build. POI to ROI!

As you can tell, RPR is loaded with property data that you can use to help your clients make smart, informed decisions. Put to good use, POI data and details can impress commercial clients and hopefully translate into more trips to the closing table.