In the meantime, real estate executives still wary of the Internet’s role in their industry will soon find they cannot be without it. New Web-based business services make their debut every day, making ever more virtual the transfer of data, knowledge, information, even transactions. The challenge for real estate industry players is to harness the constructive power of the Internet and other automated tools so as to make more informed decisions in a shorter amount of time.

Service providers, too, will benefit from Web-based information-dissemination systems, because they will deliver services more efficiently to clients. The brokerage community in particular is leveraging the power of the Internet to put essential information in the hands -- or hard drives -- of their constituents.

"Today’s commercial real estate market is highly fragmented, forcing brokers to spend hours searching many different sources for the right buyer or seller for a single property," noted John Stanfill, president and CEO of propertyfirst.com at the launch of an advanced online commercial real estate service of the same name, in June 1999. Propertyfirst.com, based in Alhambra, Calif., is an Internet real estate technology company specializing in listing commercial and industrial properties and maintaining a buyer’s database of 6,000 investors.

"Propertyfirst.com offers a single Internet destination where brokers can quickly post and search through listings, and even perform research and forecasting -- all in real time, and all from their desktops," Stanfill says. "Brokers will spend less time chasing deals and more time closing them. That means brokerage firms will enjoy increased revenue and the ability to offer improved client service while lowering operational costs. In short," he concludes, "propertyfirst.com means better business for brokers, buyers and sellers alike."

A New Service Joins the Field

Similarly, brokers can list commercial properties on Jet Speed, a listing service launched in mid-1999 by PropertyLink, Turlock, Calif. (www.proplink.com). Institutional investors and other interested parties also can view property listings -- but no photographs -- from locations across the USA. "Brokers enter just the information they want to post without disclosing the property location if they don’t want to," says Don McCoon, president. "When marketing commercial real estate, you need different avenues and a lot of different tools, and this tool helps make the broker more effective." In late July, more than US$800 million worth of property was listed on Jet Speed.

Meanwhile, four-year-old LoopNet (www.loopnet.com), San Francisco, a leading Internet-based commercial listing service, now includes a feature called LoopLeads. The service delivers commercial property leads to users based on their search criteria via e-mail. "LoopLeads gives owners and investors an edge over everyone else in the market in their search for commercial real estate property," says Dennis DeAndre, LoopNet’s CEO. "The market is highly competitive, and any delay in finding a property results in a lost opportunity. LoopLeads ensures that each opportunity is seized." More than 80 real estate organizations list properties on LoopNet exclusively.

In June 1999, Mark McLaughlin joined LoopNet as vice president of sales from Jones Lang LaSalle, where he served as senior director of the corporate and advisory services group in San Francisco. He previously was senior vice president and managing director of the corporate services group at Colliers International. "LoopNet offers me the opportunity to apply my commercial real estate expertise to the exciting challenges of the Internet," he noted when he joined the company. "As the online leader in commercial real estate, LoopNet can provide the market with solutions that streamline commercial real estate transactions. My role is to deliver those solutions into the hands of commercial real estate professionals."

Space prohibits mentioning all Web-based service provider tools; AutoExec and On the Web, among other Site Selection columns, will continue to cover technology’s evolving role in the corporate real estate industry.     SS