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Web Insight -- Where's the Best Market Research?

Web-Savvy Tenant Seeks Info... Let's assume that you're a corporate real estate director in Midtown Manhattan, and your lease will expire soon. Your landlord wants you to renew. Your broker wants you to relocate. What should you do? Are rents rising or falling? Where can you find market information? Naturally you head out to the web and stop at PikeNet first. (Hey, this is fiction.)

At PikeNet you click the Research channel, then you search the Research category and, finally, you narrow the search to New York City. After poking around a few links, here's what you find. ... The CoStar Group provides a market summary updated on November 1, 1999, with vacancy rates, absorption, blocks of space available, etc. (Market Statistics / Northeast / Manhattan / Office). CoStar indicates that it will soon sell metro market and quarterly submarket reports online.

REIS Reports writes in its Third Quarter Report that rents are expected to rise 5.1% annually (Rankings & Research / Office Markets / Rent Growth Projections). REIS Reports currently sells comprehensive reports online if you're an existing client. ... Both Grubb & Ellis' Landauer/R-E-Search and CB Richard Ellis' Torto Wheaton Research will also deliver detailed research online for a fee. ... But right now you're just trying to get a sense of the market. (After all, you're not in the real estate business!)

Back at PikeNet, you also poke around the Listings and Brokerage channels. ... You find that Office Buildings Magazine provides research from Insignia/ESG, which breaks down Midtown into eight submarkets, e.g., Park Ave, 5th/Madison, East Side, etc. (Market Statistics / Midtown NYC, 1999 Qtr2). ... Insignia/ESG presents a Market Overview for the first half of 1999 in a slightly different format at its own web site (Market Reports / New York).

CB Richard Ellis provides a nice market summary that actually divides Midtown into 18 submarkets (Market Research / Market Index Briefs / New York, Office / Manhattan Office Market 3Q99). ... Colliers ABR provides a report as of June 1999 (Market Reports / Manhattan), although I didn't find this report at the Colliers International web site (Market Reports / Local / View by City). ... Cushman & Wakefield posts a short Third Quarter 1999 Report (U.S. Local Research Statistics / New York Metro Area / New York Midtown). ... Studley provides its own Third Quarter 1999 table of statistics (Industry Knowledge / Studley Report / New York). ... Whew, and I didn't even mention all the other sites that had outdated data.

Question... There's a huge and growing volume of market research available on the web. So how do you digest it? Which web sites do you use? Send e-mail to me at . Thank you.

PikeNet 2000... When will commercial real estate embrace the net? Listen to Paul Weifel of the Chasm Group, our keynote speaker, describe the challenge of discontinuous change. ... Sign up at the Early Bird rate for PikeNet 2000, Apr 5-7, 2000, in San Francisco. Click the link at the top of the home page or go directly to www.pikenet.com/pikenet2000. ... Meet the players!

--Peter