Frequently Asked Questions

What is Fitting Insights offering?

Fitting Insights has developed proprietary Local Quality of Life Indices to enable consumers to better understand the areas in which they live, seek to live, or visit.

These indices were developed with the goal of providing high–resolution, quantified decision support to answer the basic question: what will living at this property feel like?

Unlike current offerings, these indices are localized to the area of the searched location. We continuously track 10 dimensions of local interest and provide a score for each location that is relative to its surrounding area.

How does it work?

We have quantized the entire United States into pixels to provide a granular representation of the country.

For each pixel, we continuously calculate the 10 indices based on positive and negative features present in the area. Our indices are composed of 400-800 features which we turn into opinionated weights.

Additionally, each index calculation is made at 16 cumulative distance thresholds to provide a lower and higher resolution tunable to area density. These thresholds range from about 1/3 mile to 5 miles.

How do I use it?

It’s pretty simple: just input an address or addresses and click Search.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to view the property in two different ways:

1. Relative to Nearby (for up to 3 properties)
2. Direct Comparison (for 2 or 3 properties)

What’s the difference between the two views?

The Relative to Nearby View compares the input address you entered to all of the other properties in the immediate area as defined by the selected radius. So it tells you how your input address stacks up against other addresses in the neighborhood across each category.

The Direct Comparison view only applies when there are multiple input addresses. It compares each address to one another on an absolute basis, regardless of what neighborhood they are in. What matters here is the magnitude of the difference between the scores in each category. It answers the question: how does property A compare to property B across these categories?

What are the indices you provide?

Life

The basics that make life easy and the leisure time activities that help us enjoy life.

Vice

The things we like but don't talk about liking.

Walk

Sidewalks, paths, hiking trails, and more.

Nature

Parks, beaches, gardens, and any other breath of nature.

Family

Things most important to families, from schools to picnic tables.

Density

Overall density of an area.

Grocery

Anywhere you can buy food, from a supermarket to a specialty store.

Parking

The ease of finding a place to put your vehicle.

Emergency

The places that help us out when we are in serious trouble.

Public Transport

The ease of getting around on public transport.

What kind of questions does Fitting Insights enable me to answer?

The short answer: all sorts.

Our dataset tracks everything from park benches to landfill sites to restaurants to beaches to casinos — almost 1,000 distinct features.

Here are some questions we can help answer:

• I have young children, is this property close to family-friendly activities?
• I have an elderly parent living with me, which property is closest to emergency medical facilities and grocery stores?
• I have a dog, is this property close to parks and trails?
• I just graduated from college, which of the three apartments I’m considering is in an area with the highest density of bars and restaurants?

How is this different from the information available on property websites?

The status quo on property listing websites delivers static, decontextualized scores across a small number of categories with low precision and granularity. For example, almost every property in Manhattan scores a 99/100 or 100/100 on the widespread Walk Score. Similarly, the climate scores in all parts of Houston have a low degree of variation.

This fails to give consumers a full picture of day–to–day experience in these areas and how it differs between properties in similar areas, neighborhoods, and cities.

Fitting Insights was developed to fill this gap.

Where do you get all this data from?

We use a combination of publicly–available data and our own data collection, processing, and storage technology to create a unique dataset composed of over 400 billion calculations.

Is the information updated?

As features change, our indices are updated to reflect these changes. Indices are opinionated but not fixed - new ones can be easily created and current ones can be easily modified.