Will Real Estate Listings Become a Commodity?

Can't We All Work Together? (Continued)... My Feb 20 Dispatch, Listing Standards: Are We Moving Backwards?, generated a flood of ideas reflecting a wide variety of viewpoints. That's an understatement. This Dispatch concludes coverage of this topic with some final excerpts of e-mail received.

Alan Oishi, Colliers International, Vancouver, Canada. ... "... the most recent trend [is] towards local broker associations or 'data exchanges.' ... If it gains momentum and has some leadership, I think the future could be locally controlled data exchanges with participation from institutional owners who list their own product. If so, this will consolidate into a national platform over time, perhaps with a company like LoopNet providing the public view of data."

Jeff Tyler, Merck. ... "The real estate community is overcoming two huge obstacles. One, Information hoarding -- traditionally, raw market data has been currency for brokers. And two, chaos -- a plethora of e-platforms for doing real estate deals ... The enlightened brokers realize that the highest value they add continues to be 'on the ground' knowledge of markets -- the business climate, properties, and most importantly the people, along with transaction skills."

Jim Tucker, Land Strategies, Williamsburg, VA. ... "The more we try to standardize and codify this business, the more we invite the 'commoditization' of our industry. ... When we try to homogenize the business ... we invite the world to view the business as about as complicated as choosing a new pair of shoes."

Matthew Miller, CRESA Partners, Los Angeles. ... "Listing services uniquely require the Network Effect. Much like eBay, they only work if they are the only (or primary) service. Why do we need or want more than one listing service? ... At one point 2-3 years ago it appeared that market data was finally becoming a pure commodity, as it should be. Now, by fragmenting the data among multiple providers, weak brokers can hold on a little longer by peddling data as a value added service."

Geoffrey Kasselman, Studley, Chicago, reports that the Association of Industrial Real Estate Brokers' new web site will enable a member to "direct that [a listing] be sent simultaneously to all or selected database services. This way, a member enters the information once, and the AIREB website does the rest! ... Each time a member enters a new listing on our site, it will also be saved in our own database, and when enough 'critical mass' is collected, we will have the option of providing our members with their own local MLS-type of system."

Nancy Snell, King Industrial Realty, Atlanta. ... "At King Industrial, we have over 200 listings. Right now we have those listings in an Access database where we have every possible field requested. The fields in place now are the ones that Loopnet, CityFeet and PropertyFirst use. We use the Access extract features to pull just their fields, and then we e-mail them that access table once a month."

Richard Podos, NetStruxr, New York City. ... "Think one level deeper. ... Ultimately, we are focusing on the matching process between owners' availabilities, whether listed or not, and tenants' requirements. I think the important point is that listings, in the ABSENCE of a corresponding driver (i.e., tenant demand), are sort of a commodity."

--Peter Pike