CRE Technology Predictions for 2013

I am excited to introduce a short series as we start 2013. I’ve posed four questions to a handful of my favorite CRE bloggers including Chris Clark, Duke Long and Patrick Braswell. To kick off the series, here is a preview of the questions to come, along with my own predictions. What CRE  tech niche will be ripe for disruption or improvement in 2013? Startups will continue to be disruptive in the CRE space, but with less focus on listing search (listing search was soooo 2012). Listing search is…

MSYapps: For Education, Finance and Real Estate

MSYapps is a great little suite of apps for finance, real estate and educational purposes. Here are some of my favorites: The NCREIF Property Index provides quarterly and annual total returns for thousands institutional-grade office, retail, apartment, industrial, and hotel properties. All properties in the NPI have been acquired and managed on behalf of tax-exempt institutional investors, principally pubic and private pension funds. Performance histories began in 1978. View in AppStore » The …

Building Operations In Your Pocket

Because none of our reviewers are in property management, we haven’t had an opportunity to used Building Engines Mobile. Even so, many of our readers are property managers. For this reason, we thought it would be good to post some information on the application. What does Building Engines Mobile do? This mobile platform allows property and facility management teams to: Work with a modern, fully functional onboard App and database Work offline-access equipment history, maintenance documents and i…

Visual Lease: Web-Based Lease Administration

I referred Visual Lease to someone yesterday and realized I hadn’t posted anything on it yet. The main reason is simply that I haven’t had the opportunity to use it. It looks pretty good. From the Visual Lease website: Build any report, anytime, in minutes Visual Lease is the only lease administration system that was specifically designed for reporting. Simple or complex reports can be created in just minutes. Never sweat over a report again! A custom lease administration system without the cust…

The new and improved REISReports

Quietly, REIS Reports rolled out a refreshed (and elegant!) interface. Over the years, I’ve used CoStar Comps, Real Capital Analytics and REIS for sale comps. A quick story I have had a strong preference for Real Capital Analytics over the years, as they regularly improved both the breadth and depth of their research. Another large reason was that RCA also provides lists of the most active buyers for various asset types and regions along with easy access to many of these buyers deal histories. …

The democratization of market statistics

City by city, 42Floors is liberating office for lease listings for all to see.

Are office market statistics next? Take note market incumbents…. you know who you are.

A profile of innovation at work in the commercial real estate industry…42Floors.

A Predictive CRE Property Price Index: the Holy Grail of Indices

I’ve been getting a little heat from folks at CoStar and others after my “Has Reaction Web Been Forgotten” post: While most in the CRE biz enjoy a little CoStar bashing every now and then, that was not my intent. Instead, it was to suggest that there is a HUGE opportunity for CoStar to collect even more, very valuable data, in an efficient manner through their 2003 patent and the expertise of Reaction Web’s team. Allow me to explain. By definition, every sale comp is historical. In other words,…

Has Reaction Web Been Forgotten?

Its been about 6 months since CoStar’s acquisition of Loopnet and we’re beginning to see the writing on the wall as to CoStar’s plan: CoStar Seeks to dump old Loopnet Space in San Francisco CoStar Group is putting the former LoopNet headquarters at China Basin up for sublease, but so far is not answering any questions about where, if anywhere, it plans to move the workers housed there. There is an interesting (but somewhat disjointed) conversation on LinkedIn about what will happen to Loopnet a…

Analyze a lease proposal on an iPad with LeaseMatrix

While lease analysis software is still dominated by proprietary Excel models or Excel add-ins like ProCalc, web-based analysis tools are making major advancements. For instance, using LeaseMatrix, users can analyze commercial leases in under 2:30 minutes… on an iPad. Check it out:

When was the last time you completed a lease analysis in 2:30 minutes using an Excel model?