Families who are relocating with children have two priorities - finding the right home and finding the right schools to meet their needs.

According to The Changing Work Force: Highlights of the National Study 42 percent of all wage and salaried workers have children under age 18 living at home, 32 percent have children under the age of 13, and 18 percent have children under the age of six.

Through its member survey, The Employee Relocation Council found that approximately 65% of all transferees have children and that two thirds of transferring families will move with children. Although transferees move to surroundings for a number of reasons - career advancement, or quality of life, the impact on children can be huge. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 10.8 million people who move each year are children under the age of 18, and 3.4 million of these are preschoolers.

Statistics such as these herald a large demographic shift in how employers view the relocating family. Nearly all employers (97%) provide some kind of child care assistance for their transferees including school finding assistance. One-fourth of employers have formal school finding assistance policies, with 90 percent of these offering this assistance to all current transferees.

In a study by Nadia Jensen, Stuart Copans and Audrey McCollum called "Children on the Move: How Can the Relocation Professional Help?" the researchers found that the most popular method chosen by employers to assist relocating families with children was to offer to cover the costs of school finding assistance either through a commercial provider or indirectly through a third party home purchase company, destination service provider, company-sponsored employee assistance program, consultant, or....real estate agent.

If the relocating family and their employer considers school assistance a priority, the Realtor as a service provider, should be ready to provide the information the employee and family is seeking. The researchers note that although parents may be excited and happy about a relocation, children of all ages often experience some degree of distress, which in turn stresses the entire family. The Realtor can provide immediate information that will help facilitate the move, and, perhaps, turn anxiety to excitement by offering school information directly on his/her Web site.

"Agents need good content on their Web sites and it is obvious that school information would be an important service," says Jan Anton, president of 2001 Beyond, an on-line school information service for the real estate practitioner and consumer.

Large school information aggregators such as School Match, because of their unique revenue model, offer school information directly to large corporations who are moving management personnel. Consumers can directly purchase information reports for the neighborhoods in which they are looking either directly on the site or as they peruse home search sites which carry School Match.

The National Schools Reporting Service's2001 Beyond's School Report and School Profile both offer school information directly to the consumer. But an important difference is how the real estate agent can become involved and offer additional service to the consumer.

The School Report has a link type of program in which the agent or broker can give customers school information through a link, but the agent or broker must e-mail the information which is not Web-enabled. The information is free, however, to the consumer, and the agent pays a membership fee to access the data. The NSRS also links consumers to agents who are members of the program.

But what if similar school information were available via the Internet through a Realtor? The information would still be free to the consumer, but a relationship could form as the consumer returns to the Realtor's site for additional information.

2001 Beyond(School Profile) now makes it possible for agents and brokers to offer free in-depth school information on their Web sites through two unique programs - the Gateway program and the Generator Plus program which link to the 2001 Beyond database.

The Generator Plus service allows individual agents to link from their web site to one or more counties so visitors can request specific School Profiles. The innovative and unique aspect of this service is the visitor must fill out a registration form in order to use the system and the report URL goes to the agent for them to e-mail to their customer, virtually eliminating bad e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

Used as a lead generator, the Generator Plus Service includes a free one year Individual Subscription that allows the agent access to 2001 Beyond's national database to produce unlimited reports for their clients from any computer 24 hours a day.

For the Corporate web site, the Gateway Program allows consumers that visit the site the ability to download School Profiles easily and at their convenience. Each report is customized with the Corporate Name, Address and Phone Numbers so when consumers printout the report the company information is prominently displayed throughout the report.

There is no gate-keeping or information capturing device - that is strictly left to the broker or agent. The broker can either arrange a direct download of information for consumers or set up information transfer via e-mail. The transferee can directly obtain school information by filling out information in the area they are seeking, choosing the school district, and either downloading the information immediately or waiting for an e-mail reply.

All consumers have to do is click on the broker's site, click on School Profile, pick the county, school district, and print out the information. Print outs can be customized with the broker's or agent's name and contact information at the top.

"If people know they are getting good information, they are more likely to bookmark the location where they found what they want," explains Anton. "That is what keeps people coming back."

"What people want is immediate information and we provide it quickly, but the agent still stays in control," he continues. "Since we are web-enabled, we can update our information the same day, so all the information is available in real time. We have over 20 data collectors to update the information, so that if a principal changes jobs, or new test scores come in, we can post it as soon as we are notified."

With consumer spending as long as ten minutes per visit searching for information on local schools, this activity is second only to property listings as the most requested information from a real estate site. By the first of next year, School Profile will have information on-line on over 10,000 private schools, making it unique among the school information aggregators.

If 82% of buyers use a Realtor to search for a home, and 18% use the Internet, the odds are very good that an on-line relationship between the buyer and the Realtor can lead to a transaction. Providing valuable content that attracts and keeps the homebuying consumer on the site is paramount.

Published: October 20, 1998

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