# Miscellaneous > Ask an Expert >  Combining similar columns from multiple tables

## drsprogrammer

Hello Database Journal,

I'm pretty new to database design so this might be easy for the experts here.

I'm running a MySQL DB to help manage home listings and have three tables 'Regions', 'Communities', 'Specs', 'Lots'. All of them share the same columns relating to the location of the item like street address, city, state, zip, apt#, geolat, geolng. Each item has a unique location. 

Would it be beneficial to create a "Locations" table and move the data with similar columns into it's own table (columns shared across the 4 tables related to the physical location)?
We would reduce the overall number of columns in the system by combining these columns, however we would then have an extra table and introduce a 1:1 relationship between the location table and the tables the data was pulled from.

From a database design perspective is moving this data the right move? If so / not, why?

Thanks for your help experts!

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## rmiao

From db normalization point of view, yes you should have location table.

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