Technology Bit by Byte
Oct 1, 2007 12:00 PM
Newcomer RealProspex (www.realprospex.com) is an online commercial real estate listing service trying to distinguish itself by combining state-of-the-art technology with a personalized touch.
Real estate professionals not only analyze and update each listing, but they notify registered buyers when existing or new listings match their investment criteria.
“Instead of you having to search through all these deals that are not what you are looking for, we are going to rate deals based on cash flow and upside potential, and give you a little bit of our feedback on them,” says Meir Kessner, executive vice president of New York-based RealProspex.
The RealProspex rating system follows a basic “traffic light” pattern where deals are coded green, yellow or red.
Green is cash flowing with upside potential. Yellow means a deal isn't cash flowing at the moment, but has great potential. A red deal is a listing that either has negative cash flow and downside risk, or has recently posted and has not been analyzed. Staff also follows up with brokers to make sure properties are still available and are not under contract or off the market.
The Web site has about 7,500 registered users who have taken advantage of the free membership — 1,200 brokers who are listing properties and about 6,500 prospective buyers who are looking for properties. RealProspex receives 100 new listings daily, most posted within 24 hours. The site contains approximately 1,900 commercial real estate properties — all of which are greater than the $500,000 minimum purchase price. RealProspex is retooling its Web site to make it easier to navigate and offer more features. The redesign is expected to be unveiled in December or January.
Site selection software providers add more features to help retailers and developers find locations.
By Beth Mattson-Teig
The latest site selection technology ranges from needle-in-the-haystack views from Google Earth to reams of data that address nuances of consumer buying patterns.
Not bowled over by the bells and whistles, retailers and developers utilizing these high-tech gadgets look beyond the gee-whiz factor to examine the products' broader applications that can help them maximize their efficiency and profitability — such as improving day-to-day operations of existing stores and shopping centers.
“Retailers that are sophisticated realize that a market is dynamic, not static,” says Rudy Nadilo, CEO of Woburn, Mass.-based geoVue, which primarily serves retail and restaurant clients. Nadilo says brands need to view the market as a changing landscape. For example, using geoVue's input and iPLAN market planning software, Walgreen's realized it needed to move a store twice in three years to keep up with market changes. Relocating ultimately improved its sales 30 percent.
“The technology decisions that are made today have to scale with the customer over the next five years,” says Olivia Duane Adams, founding partner at Orange, Calif.-based SRC LLC. SRC recently released new versions of its Alteryx platform, which integrates data and analytics, allowing users to quickly perform data profiling, transformation and geo-spatial analysis. Real estate pros can use the software to transport data from the site selection phase to tactical deployment — helping retailers identify customers and drive consumers to those locations.
Fort Worth, Texas-based Buxton, meanwhile, has enhanced its Customer Analytics Report, which gives users insight into their customers' purchasing habits. What had predominantly been a site selection tool can now be used for additional business functions, including merchandising and marketing. The Customer Analytics Report lets retailers see what products customers are buying at stores within various trade areas. Users can transfer the data to stock and restock stores and test products. “The new tool delivers the ability to take customer analytics to an entirely different level of granularity for our customers,” says Rich Hollander, president of the CustomerID Division at Buxton.
Pitney Bowes MapInfo offers users access to site selection tools by deploying its advanced predictive analytics models via the Web. Retail and real estate professionals can create sales forecasts and run “what if” market scenario analyses from anywhere they can access the Internet.
Pitney Bowes MapInfo also is deploying its predictive analytics technology to the Web in an application called AnySite Online RM. This application creates a trade area profile for the developer's property that is matched against a database of preferred trade area profiles and returns a targeted list of the best-matching tenants, so the developer can optimize the retail tenant mix.
