We’ll soon be on our way to sunny San Diego for the 2009 REALTOR® Conference & Expo, November 13th through the 16th.

Come kick things off at our reception:

Or swing by our booth at the expo:
Catylist Booth #3129 (in the Commercial Block)

There are great things happening at Catylist, whether you’re an association looking to grow your commercial membership or a broker looking for marketing tools and services to close more deals.

Did you know?

• Several Catylist CIEs are in the process of building comprehensive research databases, complete with off-market properties, sale and lease comps and listings.
• A Catylist CIE recently added hundreds of thousands of building records and comparables from a well-known data provider.
• Two Catylist CIEs have already made the Commercial IDX service available to their members.
• Dozens of Catylist CIEs are publishing listings on local and state EDC websites, gaining exposure for members’ listings and generating revenue for the associations.
• Many Catylist CIEs are maximizing listing exposure by syndicating their data on local newspaper and publication websites at no cost to the associations.
• Thousands of Catylist CIE members are taking advantage of our suite of integrated marketing tools to promote their listings and their companies, without additional data entry.
• Catylist offers a free email campaign service to help associations increase their commercial membership and build adoption for their CIE.
• Catylist offers FREE daily training for our products & services.
• Catylist recently added over a dozen new sites to it’s distribution network, driving more listing views and leads to members.

Come find out why we’re the #1 provider of CIE solutions to associations around the country!

Last year, we put together a commercial real estate news aggregator that combines stories from dozens of different sources around the Web. We’re always on the lookout for new sources of CRE news to add into the mix, and here are a few we’ve recently added:

• Retail Traffic’s Traffic Court Blog
• Globe Street’s Counter Culture Blog
• Urban Land Institute’s The Ground Floor Blog
• Square Feet
• Robert Knakal’s StreetWise Blog

Are there other commercial real estate news sources you like? Leave a comment and let us know!

New and Improved Listing Traffic Reporting

One of the most useful features of our CIEs is the ability to enter a listing once, then distribute it automatically to dozens of websites. By clicking on the “Track” link for any of your listing presentations, we allow you to monitor how many people have viewed it, and which site they viewed it on. We’ve overhauled this section to make it easier to measure the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts:

• New Design — The new layout, addition of logos for each website, and improved charts better emphasize the important information, making the traffic data easier to read and understand.
• Greater Consistency — You can export this data into a marketing report for your reference, or to give to your client. The improved “Track” web page and the PDF report format are much more consistent, displaying the same information.
• More Date Options — We’ve added the ability to toggle between 4 date ranges: 30 days, 90 days, 1 Year, and All Time. These ranges affect both the “Track” page and the corresponding PDF reports.
• Access for Admins — Your company administrator can now access this section to monitor traffic received by any or all property listings for your company. This will make it easier to track the effectiveness of tools like SiteLink.

Upload Multiple Photos Simultaneously

Users can now upload multiple photos at the same time, rather than attaching them to listings one-by-one. We’ve gotten a lot of requests for this. We also added the upload box to all the media pages to make it quicker and easier to find.

Copy Clients on Property Email Alerts

When a user saves a search, they can choose to be notified daily or weekly by email of new or updated properties that match their search criteria. They can now enter a second email address (for their client, assistant, administrator, etc) to be copied on those property alerts. It’s a great way to show clients that you’re on top of the market. To try this out: run a property search and click the “Save Search” link on the upper left-hand side. Then just enter a valid email address in the field labeled: “Send a copy to client email address”.

Copy Company Administrator on Listing Reminders

In order to keep data fresh and accurate, we require users to update and verify their listings regularly. Users can now choose to have their company administrator copied on all of the email reminders we send out. To enable this: log in to your CIE, click on the “My Account” tab at the top, then the “Edit Email Preferences” link. Then just click the link to “Copy my company administrator on all email”.

Post Private, Member-Only Notes on your Listings

When listing a property, there is often important information that you don’t want just anyone to see. Users can now add notes to each listing that are only viewable by other agents who are viewing their listing — these notes are not visible to the general public. Look for “Agent Notes” below the listing overview box.

View Listing Price Reductions

We’re now tracking data on listing price changes. Going forward, you’ll see a price history on every listing record detailing reductions (or increases) including dates.

Improvements to Listing Presentations

Besides adding the price histories, we’ve also made a few changes to the format of our listing presentations that should make them easier to read, highlighting the most important information. We’ve also overhauled the way we display spaces for lease. Here’s an example.

Thanks!

As always, thanks for your excellent feedback and suggestions! Please don’t hesitate to contact us with your ideas to improve the service. We’ll be rolling out more great tools in a couple months.

The Indiana Commercial Board of REALTORS® is one of our many clients hosting a local commercial real estate database for its members. These databases are called Commercial Information Exchanges (CIEs) and allow members to share information about commercial properties for sale or lease, analyze market statistics and recent transactions, and network with others in the industry. A CIE is a grassroots alternative to large national databases, and allows the local brokers to maintain ownership and control of their data.

The CIE movement has been gaining momentum for the past several years, and this article does a great job of explaining the motivations.

Read on for the full article, or click here for a scanned version from the paper.

Indiana brokers create alternative to LoopNet

By Linda Lipp, Published in the Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly on Friday, 14 August

Online listing sites such as LoopNet helped revolutionize the way commercial properties were marketed. But a 3 1/2-year-old Web-based service owned and operated by the Indiana Board of Commercial Realtors is eating away at LoopNet’s dominance and could one day replace it for most intents and purposes.

ICREX, or the Indiana Commercial Real Estate Exchange, was created in response to brokers’ concerns about the costs, structure and data ownership policies of LoopNet and similar privately owned, for-profit Web listing services.

“The systems we’ve used…each one had its issues,” said David Nugent, a partner in BND commercial and the IBCR’s northeast regional director. “On LoopNet, for example, sales and leasing are two separate databases and can’t be merged. You actually have to enter it two separate times. And once you put that info in LoopNet, they own it.”

With ICREX, listings need only be entered once, and can be adjusted and expanded if needed. But the most important aspect is that the commercial Realtor members retain ownership of the information and the system, and so they also control the costs, Nugent said.

Each commercial broker member in the state automatically has a basic membership. An upgraded, premium membership costs about $1 a day, said Jill Curtis, the IBCR’s director of marketing.

“LoopNet is three times the cost of ICREX for a premium membership,” Nugent said.

Fort Wayne-area commercial real-estate brokers got together and agreed as a group to put their listings on ICREX first, said John Caffray, of NAI Harding Dahm, who represents northeast Indiana on the ICREX commitee. Other parts of the state have not adopted it as quickly.

“Right now, the community of local brokers…has made ICREX the site we will always use,” Nugent said. Local commercial Realtors may still also use LoopNet, but each firm has decided how many and what memberships to maintain. Many have cut back on LoopNet use, but will probably maintain some sort of dual listing at least for the time being. I guess the long-term goal is for LoopNet to realize they have to sit down with commercial Realtors and negotiate and LoopNet becomes one of the sites we automatically upload to,” Nugent said.

Indiana’s board of commercial Realtors is not the only one to embrace a member-owned alternative to LoopNet and other for-profit services, Curtis noted. Thirty-five other groups across the United States have similar programs.

The ICREX and other broker groups’ listings also are fed into a number of other Web sites, including CommercialSource.com, CommercialIQ.com, Lycos and Google, to get national exposure. In Marion County, ICREX listings are fed to economic-development agencies, which can refer to them when courting prospects or helping businesses relocate.

Nugent and Caffray would like to see economic-development organizations in northeast Indiana do the same, although the details still have to be worked out. Brokers and representatives of some of the groups have discussed the possibilities, and the reaction of many has been, “When can you start?” Nugent said.

It’s hard to measure how successful ICREX has been in its short history in generating deals, Curtis acknowledged.

“We do have completed transactions. We encourage people to put those in so they are part of the system. But I think brokers kind of hold their cards close to the chest. They want to know what others are doing, but they don’t always want to provide the same information. There’s an ongoing challenge in getting that kind of feedback. We know people are having success. We just don’t have numbers,” she said.

Because it was designed by and for brokers, ICREX has several features that LoopNet does not, Caffray said. It’s more user-friendly, has better information and it allows a broker to create a custom report for a client or prospect, for example.

Listings have to be updated every 30 days to make sure the information stays current, Curtis added.

“Once the word gets out and people know about ICREX and get used to it, it will be our primary database,” Caffray predicted. “What we need is full participation in the rest of the state. I think we’ve got a good start on it, but it’s not 100 percent yet.

“I think we’re going to give LoopNet a run for its money.”

We’re very happy to welcome our newest CIE client — a regional commercial listing service serving New England! The CIE is a collaboration of three associations: New Hampshire Commercial Investment Board of REALTORS®, the Maine Commercial Association of REALTORS® and the Vermont Commercial Investment Board of REALTORS®.

The new site launched today!

“We have one of the oldest and most established CIE services in the country and we are excited about the opportunity to offer the Catylist CIE service to our members. Catylist CIE offers the most advanced service available on an intuitive and easy-to-use platform. It will increase marketing efficiencies for our members and enable them to better serve their clients”. — Dave Lefebvre, CPE Chair for the New Hampshire Commercial Investment Board of REALTORS®.

Learn more about how a Commercial Information Exchange can benefit your local community.

Read on for the full press release…

The New England Commercial Property Exchange Selects Catylist to Develop a New Regional Online Commercial Database

Serving the New England marketplace, www.newenglandcommercialproperty.com launches July 1st.

Bedford (June 25, 2009) — The regional New England Commercial Property Exchange (NECPE) is switching to the Catylist CIE service effective July 1, 2009.  NECPE serves as the regional commercial information exchange service for over 500 commercial real estate professionals participating in the New Hampshire Commercial Investment Board of REALTORS®, the Maine Commercial Association of REALTORS® and the Vermont Commercial Investment Board of REALTORS®.  Catylist is the nation’s leading provider of commercial information exchange technology.

“We have one of the oldest and most established CIE services in the country and we are excited about the opportunity to offer the Catylist CIE service to our members.  Catylist CIE offers the most advanced service available on an intuitive and easy-to-use platform.  It will increase marketing efficiencies for our members and enable them to better serve their clients”, says Dave Lefebvre, CPE Chair for the New Hampshire Commercial Investment Board of REALTORS®.

The new website will provide detailed information on available commercial real estate properties for sale or lease throughout the region. In addition, members have access to a full-featured marketing system with the ability to simultaneously market properties locally and nationally, promote themselves, create high-end marketing presentations, communicate with local and national commercial professionals, and access a variety of integrated marketing tools. The public can search for professionals, companies, and available property listings at www.newenglandcommercialproperty.com.

“Our members require a fast easy-to-use CIE service that is backed with strong customer service.  Catylist CIE provides this and we are looking forward to launching and participating on the new NECPE service,” states Matthew Cardente, Maine Commercial Association of REALTORS® President.

In addition to offering unprecedented local and regional marketing exposure for brokers and their clients, member listings and their professional profiles are also accessible on Catylist’s National Web site, Commercial IQ (www.commercialiq.com). This site houses thousands of commercial properties from across the nation posted by thousands of commercial professionals. For maximum listing exposure, commercial members have the option to send their listings via Catylist’s unique distribution channels to Google Base, Yahoo, Vast, Lycos/Oodle, REBusiness Online, CIMLS, Commercial Source and more, without ever re-entering data.

Google Earth Integration & Commercial Property KML Export

Google Earth is a great tool for visualizing the locations of commercial properties, allowing you to cover lots of ground without leaving your desk. We’ve integrated Google Earth directly into Commercial IQ and our local commercial listing services providing you 3D visualizations of the commercial properties on each site.

You’ll just need to install the Google Earth plugin, then click on the “Earth” button at the top-right corner of any map, including search results and listing presentations.

For those of you using the Google Earth desktop application or another GIS service, we’ve also added the ability to export commercial properties in KML format.

Search Expired Listings

Many of our users keep an eye on listing expirations and withdrawals as a way to prospect for leads. We put in some work to make this more efficient. You can now find links to search for “Expired” or “Withdrawn” listings on the “Comparables” search tab of any of our local CIEs.

Improved Property Input & Administration

We took another look at our property input interface to make the process smoother and more intuitive. We polished dozens of areas: adding more lease rate customization, improving the organization of the fields, adding simple warning messages when information is missing or incorrect. We also added a handy tool that allows administrators to generate a spreadsheet of listings that need attention, along with a description of the problem and the contact information for the listing agent. We hope this makes it easier to stay on top of your listings, keeping the data accurate and up to date.

Thanks!

As always, thanks for your excellent feedback and suggestions! Please don’t hesitate to contact us with your ideas to improve the service. We’ll be rolling out more great tools this Summer.

When trying to find retail space for a tenant, it’s nice to have a great commercial property search engine at your disposal. Even better though is having the perfect spaces come to you. We’ve been working with our friends Paul and Luke over at VEXRAY to make that happen.

VEXRAY works with major retail clients (Little Caesars Pizza, Sears, Ace Hardware, Cinnabon, etc.) to build a complex model defining their requirements for a prospective site. They then use those models to automatically sift through retail availabilities for matches. The result is a list of highly qualified retail sites for the tenants, and qualified leads for the listing agents and property owners.

We’re currently working to feed our retail inventory into VEXRAY. Once complete, our members’ property listings will be automatically submitted to VEXRAY and matched up with dozens of major retailers nationwide — another huge benefit for our Commercial IQ and CIE subscribers.

Look for another announcement later this Spring.

Add your listings to Commercial IQ now!

Read on for the full release…

500 New Retail Sites Wanted in 2009; VEXRAY Delivers Tenants to Catylist Subscribers

Despite record inventory levels in the retail marketplace there are still plans by national retailers to open over 4,000 new units in 2009, according to a recent study conducted by the International Council of Shopping Centers.  Roughly 12% of those new unit openings will come from retailers using a revolutionary new real estate match-making service called VEXRAY.  VEXRAY identifies optimal site opportunities among the expansive universe of supply for any retailer’s unique concept.

VEXRAY’S premise is simple.  By working with growing retailers to identify key drivers of success, VEXRAY is able to use high-powered data-mining techniques and over 1,000 success attributes to help each retailer quickly assess the entire inventory of supply to identify the sites that will maximize sales potential and minimize the risk of sales cannibalization between existing units.

“VEXRAY now allows our entire field team to stay focused on high potential real estate data.  Prior to VEXRAY our staff spent hours reviewing hundreds of emails and faxes of unsolicited site materials, most of which really never had a chance to be developed by [Ace] because they failed some major test of viability.  VEXRAY now eliminates those on the front end; saving our people time and keeping our limited resources focused on only high potential sites.  On the flip side of that same coin, I think Vexray is also a huge win for the listing agents who can now immediately know where they stand with Ace [and other participating retailers] so they too can focus their resources where it counts. In an environment like we are in – who can squander time chasing after futile opportunities.  It’s a win-win mechanism.” said John Venhuizen, Vice President Retail & Business Development for Ace Hardware Corporation.

VEXRAY goes deeper into the site evaluation process than traditional listing services or basic filtering engines.  By assessing business specific requirements such as sales potential, competitive impact, key tenant impact, brand strength, lifestage factors, and market capture rate, VEXRAY has the ability to more intelligently determine how well a site will perform for each retailer.  The result is a real-time streaming list of the highest potential sites for each retailer.  VEXRAY’S retailer roster includes household names such as Ace Hardware, Little Caesars Pizza, Schlotzsky’s, Cinnabon, Carvel, and Moe’s Southwest Grill among others.

To further enhance the match-making science of VEXRAY, a recent partnership with Catylist, an industry leading listing service, has created a valuable proposition for the commercial listing agent as well.  By integrating Catylist’s extensive warehouse of 8,000 available retail listings from Commercial IQ and their local commercial listing services around the country, VEXRAY has been able to identify and connect each listing agent to the retailers best suited for their site.  The integration is scheduled to launch later this month.

In processing all 8,000 available properties against the needs of 14 retailers, VEXRAY’S intelligence engine found that roughly 11,000 highly qualified site leads are possible matches. This means that Catylist subscribers gain the benefit of knowing exactly which retailers need their site right now.  Their sites jump to the top of each retailer’s list of high potential sites and, when the time is right, the retailer has the necessary information to contact the listing agent and take the next step.

The combination of listing service data with intelligent data-mining now allows both agents and retailers to maximize limited resources on the highest potential sites saving time and money. VEXRAY saves the listing agent time by:

1. Identifying high potential tenant leads
2. providing those leads with the demographic, competitive, co-tenant, and sales potential data needed to properly assess their site
3. allowing the agent to reach all 14 companies with one-click to find out exactly how well their site stacks up

For retailers, VEXRAY reduces the amount of time spent reviewing undesirable listing information and provides them a dynamic, real-time view of the available properties that offer the greatest potential to meet their requirements.

NAR Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo
Washington DC, May 13-15
Catylist Booth #425

ICSC: RECON
Las Vegas, May 17-20
Catylist Booth #2066

Stop by the booth to find out how we can help your company, or your local association…

• Find out why we’re the #1 REALTOR®-Operated CIE provider in the country. Discuss the difference between our marketing and research platforms.
• Let us demo our next generation scenario-based search engine, including integrated demographics, market stats and advanced mapping.
• Let us show you how easy it is for members to send e-brochures to 130,000+ recipients, power their company websites without redundant entry, integrate a CRM database, and order customized marketing to promote their company or listings.
• Check out our distribution partners. Members enter listings one time and they can publish them on more than 40 websites including the local CIE, Google, Commercial IQ, Commercial Source, 35+ local Catylist sites, Vast, Lycos, CIMLS, RE Business Online and more.
• Learn how Catylist CIEs connect directly with the business community by partnering with local and state EDCs to power their websites at NO cost to the Association.
• See how members are maximizing listing exposure by syndicating their data on local newspaper and publication websites at NO cost to the Association.

More good news!

The REALTORS® Commercial Alliance of Massachusetts, NAR’s newest Commercial Association, recently chose Catylist to power a Commercial Information Exchange (CIE) for their commercial members. The CIE will serve as the source for commercial real estate throughout the entire state of Massachusetts.

Martin Kane of King & Newton Commercial Real Estate, CIE Task Force Chair, said, “The REALTORS® Commercial Alliance of Massachusetts is excited that Catylist will serve as our CIE provider. We reviewed the latest available national CIE options and it is clear the Catylist CIE service is head-and-shoulders above any other available service. Catylist CIE offers marketing efficiencies on a property-centric service that connects member listings to multiple other sites, including Commercial IQ, Google, REBusinessOnline, Commercial Source, CIMLS, and many others. We are also impressed with Catylist’s responsiveness and their commitment to staying at the forefront of the evolving technology curve.”

We’ll be launching the site this Spring.

Learn more about how a Commercial Information Exchange can benefit your local community.

We helped the Greater Baton Rouge Association of REALTORS® develop the Louisiana Commercial Database in 2003. It now contains over 5,500 commercial listings for sale or lease throughout the state and is used to search and market commercial property by nearly 700 professionals including most of the largest brokerage firms in Louisiana.

“LACDB is proud to renew its service with Catylist for another 3-year term,” said Barry Spizer, CCIM, LACDB Immediate Past Chair. “We looked at other available service providers in the market, but it was obvious Catylist offers superior technology on a user-friendly platform. From the search engine, market stats, demographics, listing analytics and the new Market Monitor feature, Catylist offers the best CIE service available today… period.”

Learn more about how a Commercial Information Exchange can benefit your local community.