Cleveland and Cuyahoga County Geographical Information System (GIS)

Buyer Education

The Cuyahoga County Engineer's Geographical Information System (GIS) is an exceptional new tool (made available to the public in 2008) that should be used by both Greater Cleveland real estate agents as well as home sellers and buyers alike to find out more about a general area, as well as very detailed information about neighborhoods and individual properties.

If you are familiar with the term GIS, type in "Geographical Information System" into Google and look at the various descriptions -- you will be amazed at the features this three-letter acronym represents.

Cuyahoga County is the GIS system for the county surrounding the City of Cleveland.  Many counties in Northeast Ohio also have GIS systems that can be very valuable to find out more information about a specific property.  Simply Google: [county name] GIS -- and you will find it in seconds.  Here is an example for Geauga County in Northeast Ohio and you will see the link is the first result.

I use GISs all the time to either validate or invalidate claims made by a listing agent, such as whether a property backs to a county or national park, what are the property's true dimensions, color coded land use, zoning, contours/topography, hydrography, soils, demographic information, sex offenders, traffic counts, government facilities (city hall, court houses, etc.), public services such as schools, hospitals, community centers, colleges, museums, tourist attractions, historical monuments, recreational facilities, shopping and entertainment, transportation and the like.  A good GIS system pulls all of this information together in one place so the total is much more than the sum of its parts.

GISs accomplish this by the use of "layers" that you can turn on and off.  The previous paragraph listed various things (land use, zoning, etc.) that are examples of layers.  If the box is checked, the feature is turned on in the map.

Here is a practical example that I've used on behalf of many clients, as well as encourage clients themselves to investigate:

• I want a level and usable yard - no ravines, no sharp drop offs, etc.  Using the contours/topography feature will easily answer this question, not only for this property, but the entire area.
  
• What is really around me?  -- While one can use Google Maps, Google Earth, etc., and these are great tools, a GIS, with it's much more rich list of information, allows a user to zoom in on adjoining properties, see if there is perhaps any mixed-use zoning nearby, etc.  Using a GIS for a client in the past allowed me to see the extent of a greenhouse operation which provided enough detailed information for further research to eliminate this property from consideration.

 Happy GISing!

Date: Monday, March, 23rd 2009 @ 07:10:28 PM
Views: 234

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