This story appears in the 2025 Advisor, a publication sponsored by Colliers Utah.
Using drones and cutting-edge mapping technology, Utah’s Colliers real estate technology support team can show clients everything from nearby transmission lines to up-to-date aerial views of rapidly developing areas like Eagle Mountain — all with a few clicks.
Mapping the future of real estate
This is, in part, thanks to the Map App — a multi-layer mapping application that allows clients or brokers to display a traditional mapping application layered with any number of different filters. These filters include demographic information — average household income, household size, population density and more — as well as development information like current office, hotel or multifamily construction projects.
Business Development Marketing Manager Brett Scothern calls the system “the most robust interactive map, I believe, in the nation — if not the world.” It’s specific to Utah, partly because the state has open-source data.
“Whenever the state updates their information, it automatically updates on this end so we are getting the most up-to-date information,” says Ernie Cottle, Colliers GIS manager of Utah. Other proprietary data layers are maintained manually by Colliers’ in-house team.
About three years ago, a full revamp and redesign gave users more customization and a more robust system than its predecessor. Hundreds of filters exist from ever-changing data and demographics to illustrating where the nearest golf course is. Any map app or even a Google search could pull up golf courses near you, but this gives you more than just a point on a map, Cottle says.
“Google Maps can’t provide detailed demographic overlays,” he continues. “With a printed map, you get static data, but an interactive map lets you overlay demographics with zip codes, showing how they relate and helping users focus on details their clients need.”
It can happen pretty quickly. Cottle recalls one instance where he was pulled into a meeting with a client to display the Map App. The client inquired about proximity to transmission lines and substations, and though a layer with that information wasn’t available, Cottle was quickly able to add one in real time.
“That right there is what won us business that day — being able to accommodate and find this data and immediately add it in so that it was right there and readily available for them,” Cottle says.
Another type of visualization
Aerial 360 Journeys is a new program from Colliers Utah that involves 360-degree imagery taken with drones to give both clients and brokers a wide-angle, high-quality view of the world around a property.
The idea was originally Scothern’s. The tool is limited to Colliers Utah and is still in development, but Scothern believes it will be available to Colliers on a national level very soon.
Scothern came up with the idea while shooting monthly-progress drone photography of a development for a broker to give out-of-state buyers a better view of the area. Now, about a dozen brokers with drones go out and provide their 360-degree images.
“Aerial 360 Journeys is really starting to take off,” Cottle says. “In six months, we have gathered nearly 60 images all over Utah, from St. George to Salt Lake City and from Heber City to Grantsville.”
Scothern says that, from this point on, it’s about getting as much imagery as possible.
“I want to have hundreds and hundreds of points,” he continues. “I think it’s going to be key for brokers to show their clients what’s really happening in an area instead of depending on Google Maps, where sometimes, if it’s not a well-populated area, they don’t scan for five years.”
A lot of business is happening in rapidly developing areas like Eagle Mountain, Tooele and Heber, so knowing that information is up-to-date is important.
“Nobody else is doing this, so it really gives us a competitive advantage when we’re trying to win business,” Scothern says. “No other brokerage has the technology that we have.” It also presents an opportunity for the client to be more involved in the process.
Setting the national standard
Soon, clients and brokers may get an opportunity to use a similar system outside of Utah.
“This could be massive in the next couple of years,” Scothern says. “When the concept was presented to the director of technology, he was very excited and expressed the desire to see it utilized throughout Colliers on a national level.”
Colliers Utah Associate Tyler Broussard has so far been involved in one deal that closed with the assistance of this very new process, and he’s excited by the possibilities it offers.
“I’m excited to see where this goes and happy that the Salt Lake Valley is putting it out first,” Broussard says, noting that it’s no surprise Colliers and Utah are on the cutting edge. “It’s awesome and unbelievably exciting, but to be frank, this is what we try to do at Colliers. We’re trying to push the limits; we’re trying to stay on the edge.”