A geographical information system for real estate (GEOVAL)

Abstract

The basic aim of the project is the design of a geographical system which has the ability to provide all the benefits of geoinformatics on issues and projects of land valuation and land management. By nature, real estate market is spatial market and thus GIS can provide, in one hand, several very powerful tools for land value estimation, management of real estate and on the other hand land promotion. These three procedures are the central components for the design of GEOVAL system. It is well known to real estate firms that the use of GIS can offer lots of benefits for them. These firms, which did use GIS, reported that GIS is important or very important to their overall mission (Fryrear et al. 2001). GIS can also provide more accurate measurements on land and contributes to productivity as well. For example, GIS can provide a superior location variable relative to the traditionally used straight-line distance assumption (Rodriguez et al. 1995). Mobile GIS provides also powerful tools for real estate firms, especially due to field work and the actual need for transportable solutions. Valuation is also a fieldwork-based process which is based on geodata collection in order to provide the best accuracy to the estimation of land values. All these advantages can lead to a major reduction of real estate firms costs. GIS can also provide important tools for storing a large amount of data with spatial relationship. GEOVAL system is a tool for many spatial functions like other GIS systems for real estate. The spatial functions are in general terms geographic selection, manipulation, exploration and finally confirmation (Anselin 1998).