Wow. I’ve never seen this before. But I must say it makes sense: probably the biggest and most well thought through decision you’re ever going to make is which house to buy and where. And if you had your druthers and you’d druther not live around a bunch of Republicans/MAGAs that is possible to assess now. There is a new platform that you can sign up on and know the political demographics of your prospective neighborhood.
“Beyond standard search filters, Oyssey pioneers never before available block-by-block social and political data,” the app’s website reads. The platform sources that information from “election results and campaign contributions, along with housing trends and other social data,” the New York Post writes.
“It’s about getting buyers homes that they love,” Oyssey’s CEO, Huw Nierenberg told Axios, which wrote about the app’s unique feature. Nierenberg has also said he’s on a mission to “democratize home search data.”
Oyssey, which is a fairly new company and only recently soft launched in South Florida and New York City this October, also provides users with a host of other local demographic data, including information on the age, education, and income of potential neighbors.
One of the more intriguing data points Oyssey offers is the ability to tell how many dogs live in your neighborhood. If you live in a place like New York City, this is genuinely useful information. Either A) you like dogs, and you want to know where you can see as many as possible, or B), you dislike having to sidestep dog crap whenever you leave your apartment and would like to know where they are least likely to reside. Overall, a good feature.
When it comes to the political screening element of Oyssey’s offerings, there is obviously more to be worried about. On the one hand, you can see why homebuyers would want this kind of information. Who doesn’t want to know who their neighbors are? On the other hand, it might not be such a great idea to incentivize people to only live with people who are already like them. Plus, in a place like New York City, I don’t think you’re going to be getting a whole lot of political variety, anyway.
Not in New York or California, same reason, but a lot of states are purple. Certainly all the swing states are that because they vote one way in certain elections and the opposite way in others. So in those states it would be good to have the ability to know who your neighbors are.
And frankly I’d like to know where there are dogs and chlldren. One of the reasons I live where I live now is because it is quiet as the tomb, with rare exception. I need it quiet because I work out of my house and I can’t work if dogs are barking or kids are screaming. That may sound un-American but it’s simply the way of things. So that’s a feature that I would want to use a database for.
That’s the upside. The downside is that all this makes you wonder if everything in your life is going to be a matter of public record soon — or obtainable, in any event. Think of it: what you buy at the grocery store may be recorded, the kind of wine you drink, how often, what clothing companies you have ship you goods, all of it. Everything that enters your home either got there because it was delivered or because you brought it in.
It might all be available in some Big Brother encyclopaedic database in the cloud. Sobering thought.
In may garnet red county, there’s no way I could avoid living among Republicans. Besides, I bought the house 22 years ago and this was not available. But at least in this neighborhood they are quiet about it. In fact, they’re pretty quiet about everything. And, like you, I appreciate that.