Community Conversations: Rating Where You Call Home

A few weeks ago, we launched our new Houlihan Lawrence website and have been introducing bits and pieces of it week by week. One of our proudest new features doesn't have much to do with real estate at all - it has do with collecting thoughts and opinions from Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess counties regarding how they feel about where they live. 

Following in the footsteps of great review sites like Yelp and Amazon, we wanted to incorporate something into our new website that amplified the voices of our users. Because we live in a world where we're essentially basing our decisions around other people's decisions, we decided to build a platform that allows those who visit our website to do just that - rate and review the places they've called home, worked or visited in Westchester, Putnam and/or Dutchess counties.

Which brings us to Community Conversations. Users sign into the site via social.houlihanlawrence.com, create an account and make reviews like they would about an experience at a restaurant or a product they recently purchased online. Describing the personality and character of a given place, users tap into their own personal experiences to illustrate what they love and don't love about where they live. This can include local cultural institutions, eateries, parks, walkability, nightlife, traffic, transportation access - anything that helps to paint a portrait of what it's like to live in say, Scarsdale or Southeast.

Since this platform is about conversation, users can also post questions to different town pages if they want certain information about a great restaurant for an anniversary dinner in East Fishkill or where the best place is to take your kids is in North Salem on a rainy day. The discussion is not limited to a singular answer, and anyone can provide input for both popular and unanswered questions.

Where do you come in? We'd like to invite you to help us get the conversation started. As local residents, there's nobody that can speak to what it's like to live around here like you can. And it's extremely easy to sign up.

• Visit social.houlihanlawrence.com – in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, press the ‘Join Now’ button.
• Use the search engine on the homepage to find your community – start by typing in your town or village’s name.
• Explore your community’s page – each community has a ‘Write A Review’ and ‘Ask A Question’ button at the top of the page. You can answer questions on the right hand portion of the page.

If you have any additional questions, feel free to email me at social@houlihanlawrence.com. Thanks for helping us get the conversation started!

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