FIS Powers Autodesk's Real Estate Planning

Looking Back at LoopNet's Roots... This is Rich Boyle, the new CEO of LoopNet. I visited with Boyle last week to discuss LoopNet's new Premium Service.  But first some background. ... It seems like ancient history now, but I well remember many fun-filled conversations with Dennis DeAndre, founder of LoopNet, in 1996 and 1997.  PikeNet had launched in March of 1996.  LoopNet had launched in September 1995.  At the time PikeNet was a one-man band (still is), and LoopNet was a one-and-a-half man band (Dennis had a part-time data entry assistant).  We were both trying to understand this crazy thing called the Internet. 

Pretty quickly LoopNet raised $30 million and took off like a rocket before merging in June 2001 (post-Bubble) with PropertyFirst, started by my friend John Stanfill, which itself had raised $45 million.  In a dramatic switch from LoopNet's previous (free) model, the new entity launched a "Premium Service" at a monthly cost of $39.95 per user.  The essential difference between the Premium and the Basic Service is a 30-day delay in viewing listing information posted.  So there's a big incentive to sign up.  Who wants 30-day old information?  In addition, the Premium service offers enhanced marketing and searching capabilities, like priority placement, extensive reporting, push e-mail to prospective buyers, and MyLoopNet administrative access

Currently LoopNet has signed up over 4,000 users, which Boyle says is "ahead of plan."  Like DeAndre and Stanfill, Boyle strongly emphasizes that LoopNet is based upon a "cooperative and collaborative" relationship with the brokerage community.  Boyle states that there are about 160,000 properties in the LoopNet database roughly equally divided between for-sale ($130 billion) and for-lease (2 billion square feet).  As we poked around the database and searched for shopping centers in Texas and office space available South of Market in San Francisco, I was impressed by the functionality of the interface and the number of properties listed.  But real estate data is incredibly local, and I'm sure that comprehensiveness varies around the country.  Will LoopNet's powerful and relatively inexpensive tools motivate a critical mass of professionals to sign up and to populate LoopNet's database with quality information?  That's exactly the battle that Boyle says LoopNet will fight in the coming months -- market-by-market, user-by-user.

--Peter Pike / ppike@pikenet.com