Introduction

Lofty supports creating a landing page to feature each area in your market to attract more leads using auto-populated local information. Different featured area pages have the same style with content related to that area. Creating them one by one could be a lot of work, so the CMS Tool also supports creating a group of featured area pages at a time.

Notice: The Starter package does not come with this feature. If you are on a Starter package and interested in using this feature to its full effect, please contact Support for upgrade options.

Important: Depending on when your Lofty website was created, you will see one of the two UIs.

If you see Areas in the CMS menu, please jump to the instructions here: BETA - Featured Area UI
If you do not see Areas in the CMS menu, please continue below.

Summary

Import the Area You Need
Add a Featured Areas page or Group
Edit a Featured Area Page or Group
Featured Area Levels
Neighborhood Page Optimizations
- Multi-Level Neighborhood Selection
- Adding a Listing Page
BETA - Featured Area UI
- BETA - Featured Area Pages

Import the Area You Need

Choose the area you need by navigating to Settings>Featured Areas in the CMS tool.

Click the "+ Add New Area" button:

Use the search bar to type in the area you want to add：

Select all areas you need and click "OK" to get to the next step. If the button is unclickable and grayed out, you have already added this area.

The newly added areas will automatically generate an introduction page, which will be adjusted to the most suitable page style for your website, but they will not appear on your site unless you add the corresponding pages or blocks.

Use the search bar to locate the area you added and use the three buttons to the right of the area display row to customize or delete it.

Learn More: Add / Edit Website Pages.

featured area action buttons and search.jpeg

1. Customize the page

2. Edit the page settings, I.E Page name, URL, open style

3. Delete the Featured Area

Add a Featured Area Page or Group

Navigate to the Page Editor and click on the "Pages" option:

Click on the "+ Add Page" button:

Select the "Featured Area" page template, and our system will match the most appropriate page style for your website configuration.

Locate the area you want to add using the search bar and choose it by clicking the box next to it.

You can also click the top box to select all areas.

*Note You must first import the area in settings. Refer to: Import the Area You Need

The introductory page navigation for any areas you have chosen and saved will display under Page Editor>Pages>Hidden Navigation and can be personalized like other pages.

To display the area in the navigation bar menu, hover over the box corresponding to the area, click, and hold while moving the pointer to the related folder like "Neighborhoods".

After completing the rest of the configuration, don't forget to click the "Publish" button in the top-right of the CMS Tool in order for the changes to apply to the live website.

Edit a Featured Area Page or Group

If you want to adjust the page style, please refer to Add / Remove / Edit Blocks on Pages.

*IMPORTANT: Please note that if you edit a Featured Area page group, your modifications will apply to all Featured Areas in this group at the same time.

If you want to modify the content for the pages you just configured, you can click the "Edit" option next to the Featured Area that you want to edit:

In order to better display the effect of the configurations that you are adjusting, the CMS Tool preview uses default Featured Area demo data.

If you want to see how it applies to your actual Featured Areas, click the "preview" button on the top bar.

Featured Area Levels

Unlike cities, counties, and zip codes, there is often no governmental authority that dictates the boundaries of what is termed a "neighborhood." Neighborhood boundaries are oftentimes determined by the residents of the neighborhoods. Some people think of a neighborhood as being a specific subdivision or housing development. Others consider a neighborhood to consist of a larger area, made up of multiple subdivisions, or a particular section of a suburb, village, or enclave. Others consider their neighborhood to be comprised of a larger district, perhaps spanning multiple cities or zip codes.

Another issue arises from the fact that neighborhoods can overlap. Consider the Alphabet City neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City, NY. This neighborhood is part of the East Village neighborhood which, in turn, is part of Lower Manhattan. This means that a residence on parts of East 14th Street, New York, NY may be located in three different neighborhoods.

Lofty's data comes from Home Junction (Attom Data). The API supports four different levels of neighborhoods. Generally, the neighborhood level is based on the size of the neighborhood, but other factors can contribute to its categorization:

Level	Description
1	A district, region, master-planned community, or major section of a metropolitan area. For example, Midtown Manhattan, Central Los Angeles, or Summerlin, NV.
2	The most common definition of a neighborhood typically represents a colloquial grouping of streets. For example, Greenwich Village, New York, NY, or North Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA.
3	A sub- or secondary neighborhood, typically representing a section or enclave within a level 2 neighborhood. For example, Alamo Square, San Francisco, CA, or Chester Square, Boston, MA
4	A micro-neighborhood represents a specific condo, apartment building, or residential housing tract within a level 3 neighborhood. For example Corinthian Pointe, Houston TX, or The Austonian, Austin, TX.

The neighborhood data outlined above will NOT be available for any areas in Canada. While neighborhood pages are desirable because they bring in demographic data as well as all listings available automatically, you will still be able to build a listing page for a target neighborhood or city to share with your clients and include on your website.

Neighborhood Page Optimizations

Multi-Level Neighborhood Selection

The data used to produce data and boundaries for neighborhoods oftentimes has multiple levels. What this means is that there are multiple definitions for a neighborhood using the exact same name. With this update, you can toggle between them using the icon next to their name and this will result in the boundary displaying at the left adjusting accordingly. This icon will only appear when there are multiple options for that same neighborhood name.

Adding a Listing Page

First of all, be sure that you have "Canada" selected under CMS > Settings > Basic Info > Country.

cms country settings.jpeg

1. Go to Page Editor> Click the +Add Folder button on the left panel. Rename the new page that will be added under the Hidden navigation list.

adding folder name.jpeg

2. Create your listing page by going to Editor> Pages > +Add page. Choose Listing on the Page Template tab and hit the Next button.

cms add a listing page.png

3. Type the page name, you can use the neighborhood/city name.

listing page name and url.jpeg

4. Insert the new page into your Neighborhood folder by dragging the 3 lines.

drag down neighborhood.jpeg move neighborhood page in a folder.jpeg

5. Edit the page by clicking the pencil icon on the upper right. Go to the left panel option to add a custom listing filter then save.

edit listing page.png

custom listing filter.png

type address or listing id.png

This guide shows the typical components of neighborhood data for the U.S. vs. Canada:

Block Type	Screenshot	U.S	Canada
Map
Area Introduction			*No crime data is available
Listings
Market Trends
Local Info
Schools & Businesses
Demographic Information

BETA - Featured Area UI

If a Lofty user has this Featured Area UI, you will see Areas in the CMS tool menu. If you do not have Areas, you have the original UI. This Featured Area UI is currently in CLOSED beta. This feature is not available by request.

featured area Beta.png

After clicking + Add New Area, a drop-down will allow you to select if you are adding a City or a Neighborhood. The cities and neighborhoods available are dependent on the connected MLSs. A boundary may not appear for all neighborhoods, as the boundary is generated from Home Junction. Be sure to scroll down to add the agent that will represent the featured area.

city neighborhood.png

After the city/neighborhood has been added, 2-3 pages will be created. Those pages are outlined below.

Featured Areas Beta Neighborhood.png

BETA - Featured Area Pages

After the city/neighborhood has been added, 2-3 pages will be created. It's important to note that while three pages are created, they do not all need to be added to the Lofty website since they all link to each other. You can choose which if any, pages you would like to display on your Lofty website. Each page has its own SEO settings, so Lofty users and utilize these to market their specialized areas.

Introduction

The Introduction page is the same as the current Neighborhood page. This page contains a map at the top with nearby listings, Market Trends, Nearby Locations, Local Information, and Demographics. Clicking More Listings will link to the Search Page.

Discover Brooklyn, MD Boundaries, Schools, Listings & Demographics 2023-10-12 at 2.59.53 PM.jpg

Search

The Search page lists the homes for sale in the selected area. Clicking Area Overview will link to the Introduction Page. Clicking Market Insights will link to the Market Page.

Market

The Market page provides statistical home sales and value data for the selected area.

Clicking Area Overview will link to the Introduction Page. Clicking More Listings will link to the Search Page.

Brooklyn, MD Real Estate Market Insights Brokerage Stageauto-3 Test 2023-10-12 at 3.05.51 PM.jpg

Questions?

If you have any questions regarding this topic or any others, please reach out to our Support Team via email at <support@lofty.com>, by phone at 1 (855) 981-7557, or by chat with us through your Lofty CRM.

Articles in this section

Add / Edit Featured Areas

Introduction

Summary

Import the Area You Need

Add a Featured Area Page or Group

Edit a Featured Area Page or Group

Featured Area Levels