Understanding Your ListTrac Report
The image below is a clip from ListTrac Web Insights for an MLS. ListTrac is now reporting metrics from nearly every major IDX vendor, the major portals, and the MLS systems including Black Knight, Matrix, FlexMLS, and Rapattoni – in total, over 100,000 real estate property search sites. This particular report shows listing views. It should be no surprise that Zillow is the leading consumer site for viewing property. In most MLS areas, Zillow has more traffic than all other sites combined (which is true in this market). Here are some interesting observations: The MLS system matters The MLS system is a major point of engagement for consumers who are home shopping. Moreover, consumers viewing property from the MLS system are working close enough with a real estate agent that the agent goes through the trouble of setting up their saved search. Of course, the MLS views will also include the research done by agents when they do searches. It is a hard number to dissect, much in the same way that traffic to Zillow is hard to dissect the intention of consumers on Zillow or other consumer sites. Homes.com? Homes.com was contested by Realtor.com when CoStar CEO, Andy Florence, announced that Homes.com has garnered enough traffic to become the second highest ranking portal in America. Realtor.com CEO, Damian Eales, stated in a podcast that Andy's statement is easy to make "when you are grading your own homework." WAV Group has not seen a ListTrac report that validates the claims of Mr. Florence in any market, but we have no reason to doubt him. If you have evidence, please pass it along. Homesnap? Sadly, Homesnap has also disappeared from these reports. Homesnap was the partner to the Broker Public Portal and was garnering tremendous traffic in many markets. Before the sale to CoStar, I believe that 1.2 million real estate agents were benefiting from their service through their MLS. I still do not understand why CoStar killed that product. As you can see, Zillow has retained Trulia, which is outperforming Homes.com in this market. Who is IDX vendor Cyberitas? A Google search result of the company indicates that they are working with Anywhere brand Century 21. In this market, Century 21.com is slightly ahead of virtual tour vendor Property Panorama in terms of traffic, and slightly behind Homes.com in overall traffic. I found it interesting that Century 21 has more traffic than Coldwell Banker in this market. Typically, it is reversed. The Power of IDX (or powerless IDX) In terms of IDX vendors, Reliance Networks and MoxiWorks were tied, followed by IDX Broker and iHouseWeb. But overall, IDX is dwindling in terms of attracting consumers to search for properties. WAV Group believes that IDX vendors have failed to keep up with the portals in one key area: IDX sites do not display listings of all parcels. They only display the listings for sale or recently sold (in many markets). Consumers love getting the listing information at the parcel level published by Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, Homes.com, Movoto, Redfin; and the newly appointed sites by RE/MAX and Compass that have also become parcel centric. If you are a broker, remember to log into ListTrac and look at how your listings are performing in the market. Share that information with your agents so they understand these numbers and remind them that ListTrac has seller reports that show where a client's listing is being viewed. If you are an MLS and would like help interpreting the ListTrac report and communicating that to your brokers, agents, or consumers, reach out to our team. WAV Group Communications can help. Other ListTrac Data Points ListTrac will also show you how many leads were generated off of listings, and which sites generated the most number of leads. They will also show visitor trends. You will be amazed at how much traffic dips in the MLS on weekends. I love the top agent report. As you might expect, the agent with the most listings has the most views of their listings. The geographic traffic report is fascinating. It allows you to look at where the consumer is searching from. This particular market has significant search traffic from the major Texas cities. The national narrative is that everyone is moving to Florida and Texas – but this area is attracting folks from Texas. Last but not least are the most popular price points. Seventy percent of all search traffic in this market was for homes under $500,000. As you can tell, I am a ListTrac fan. If you have it in your market, make a point to review it every month. Be sure to include it in your training and communications. To view the original article, visit the WAV Group

RPR's Data Partners: Your Secret Weapon in Commercial Real Estate
RPR (Realtors Property Resource) offers commercial real estate practitioners a wealth of listing and property data, plus access to an array of analytical and ROI-focused tools. With over 800K listings, 57 million off-market property records, site selection tools, consumer demographic research, trade area data, traffic counts, POIs (points of interest) and more, RPR Commercial is basically a one-stop-shop for all things CRE. However, one question we hear over and over is: where does RPR get all of this commercial data and information? As an aggregator of data and resources, RPR is the ultimate commercial hub for REALTORS® to conduct commercial real estate business. In this article, we'll present our impressive list of commercial partners by what category they fall under and how our partnership can help you in your daily commercial duties. RPR Commercial partnerships can help power your business RPR has collabs, partnerships and affiliations with some of the biggest names in commercial real estate. Here's a list, by category: For Sale/For Lease Data Partners Brevitas: Brevitas is a national commercial listing platform that is integrated into RPR. Their real estate marketplace provides REALTORS® a turn-key marketing solution and an instant competitive edge by offering a robust collection of property search and marketing tools. CREXi: CREXi offers a database of commercial listings, including more than 48 million property records. It also provides RPR with daily updated data, which helps commercial real estate professionals quickly manage deals and close them faster. TotalCommercial: TotalCommercial.com has been providing commercial real estate listing information online since 1995. TotalCommercial.com shares its listing information through RPR to offer REALTORS® more listings and more property research resources. Land Broker MLS: LandBrokerMLS.com was formed in 2018 by real estate brokers and agents to assist rural real estate professionals in their ability to view land listings. LandBrokerMLS contributes listing data to RPR's commercial platform. Biproxi: Biproxi's new public marketplace is called Officespace.com and it provides powerful listing capabilities for "for sale" and "for lease" properties. Biproxi's Officespace.com provides listing information for RPR's commercial real estate users. Catylist: Moody's Analytics Catylist offers a commercial property listing and marketing solution to numerous REALTOR® associations and CIEs (Commercial Information Exchanges). It helps RPR receive licensed commercial listing content from many markets across the country. CompStak: CompStak is a nationwide crowdsourced commercial comp database that offers RPR users to receive 500 free credits to search and share commercial comparables. Get started by clicking on the CompStak logo in the Additional Resources section of any RPR commercial property page. Officespace.com: See BiProxi above. ICSC: ICSC, The International Council of Shopping Centers, has a special agreement with RPR to offer retail and commercial real estate data, which contributes significant insight relevant to the shopping center industry and broader commercial sectors. Off-Market Properties Black Knight: Black Knight is the backbone of RPR property data. It provides RPR users with quick access to public records including tax details, zoning, ownership information down to the corporate level, and much more, including Assessment and Recorder datasets. Site Selection Data Esri: Esri is RPR's main source of consumer data. It supplies RPR with economic, demographic, and spending data, as well as tapestry segment profiles. This particular data fuels RPR analytical tools such as Trade Area Reports and Site Selection Analysis. Financial Analysis Valuate: Valuate® is a web-based financial analysis and marketing tool for the purchase and sale of commercial and residential investment properties. From RPR, users can easily access the platform to perform real-time, interactive ROI analyses in a collaborative work environment. Traffic Counts Kalibrate: Kalibrate powers the traffic counts found on RPR's commercial maps. They provide this data quarterly from various sources, including governments, transportation departments, and Kalibrate's own field verifications. Tenant Data SMR Research: SMR works with RPR to provide a proprietary database of 25 million U.S. companies, schools, and other institutions for commercial property insights, and the data is updated quarterly. ClimateRisk Assessment and Mitigation Climate Check: ClimateCheck®, available in the RPR "Additional Resources" section, offers an assessment of a property's climate risk. It will rate a property's future risk of climate change-related hazards and assign a rating from 1 to 100, with 100 representing the highest risk. Risk Factor: Also available in the RPR "Additional Resources," Risk Factor provides climate and environmental risk data for real estate properties, helping REALTORS® understand and communicate potential risks related to climate change. Existing Businesses (POIs – Points of Interest) Data Axle: Known for its robust business databases, Data Axle provides detailed company profiles and other commercial real estate-related data to enhance the commercial offerings on RPR. Esri: Supplies RPR with economic, demographic, and spending data, as well as tapestry segment profiles. RPR: Commercial listings, data and tools–all under one roof As you can see, RPR brings a vast amount of commercial resources and data and puts them all in one place so you can search listings, conduct research and tap into resources that help your clients make data-backed decisions. And if you're a REALTOR®, there's no extra charge to use as part of your membership in The National Association of REALTORS®. However, if our impressive list of commercial partnerships doesn't convince you, listen to what Dave Ferro, Managing Broker and Vice President of Watson Realty Corp in Gainesville, Florida, has to say about RPR Commercial: "I go to RPR Commercial to save time and simplify. That perfectly sums it up for me. I don't have to go to each individual's website for listing info. I can see all my properties and deals in one location. It's such a great place to search, every commercial agent should try it." To view the original article, visit the RPR

RPR Commercial's 2024 Real Estate Market Outlook
Much like its residential counterpart, the commercial real estate market faced a pretty challenging year in 2023. Some say it was the most challenging ever. Big picture, the industry as a whole is suffering and still feeling the hangover effects of the pandemic. According to some experts, office space vacancy rates are at a 30-year high at 18%. This, coupled with rising interest rates and a potential recession on the horizon, have all been working against the business side of real estate. However, not all sectors of commercial real estate are scuffling. In fact, some are doing quite well, and are poised to offer more growth in the coming year. This is why RPR (Realtors Property Resource) is offering this 2024 commercial real estate forecast, as well as to offer some pointers about how using RPR Commercial can add value to your efforts as a commercial practitioner. RPR's 2024 Commercial Real Estate Forecast While many experts are expecting the residential market to bounce back a bit and improve across the board this spring, the commercial sector is a mix of optimistic growth and more of the same. Leading the more-of-the-same category (as in bad) is office space, which is predicted to be flat, or possibly worse. Office space As mentioned in the opening, office occupancy is historically low. The bottom line: people prefer working from home and corporations and businesses are trying their best to get them back to the office. But with unemployment low and individual productivity high or level, it's a tough sell to employees and businesses have almost no leverage to put butts in office chairs. Even hybrid schedules aren't enough to justify massive office buildings, as owners and investors try to pivot and figure out what to do with all the empty space. Some are getting creative and turning empty work buildings into apartments, while some are simply razing structures altogether and rebuilding for the future with an eye on data centers and warehouses. Either way, the future of office space is still bleak. On the flip side, here are some commercial segments that are primed for growth: Brick and mortar rebound? Even with e-commerce's continued growth and most mega malls being half empty, there is some hope on the horizon for neighborhood-focused retail success. Densely populated urban and suburban areas (strip malls) are propping up the retail sector with growth and positive numbers. With less new construction and therefore less competition, neighborhood and community shopping centers are showing strong vacancy rates and positive rent growth for the foreseeable future. When it comes to these types of retail locations, RPR Commercial can be a great asset. The Site Selection tool offers commercial agents an edge when it comes to finding ideal areas for retail business sites. Here's a top line of what it can do: Allows users to select specific attributes from broad data categories such as economic, demographic, spending, tapestry and more. With these attributes selected a user can search a large geography such as a county, and identify where these conditions exist in smaller geographies such as ZIP codes or neighborhoods. This drilling down allows a user to search for properties only in these geographies that have their desired attributes, ensuring that the core drivers of a client's business are in the area. For a strip mall focused site selection success story, check out RPR's article Spot-on Site Selection is how the Cookie Crumbls. Multi-family offers multi opportunities Multi-family (apartments and condos) investment opportunities appear to be on the rise. That's mostly attributable to rising mortgage rates from 2023 that have put homeownership beyond the reach of many families. Of course, housing shortages and a slowdown of new builds is also a factor. And while that might not be optimal for residential and the middle class as a whole, it does create demand for multi-family units and those who have the capital to invest in them. In fact, multi-family is among the few commercial categories that are seeing rent growth and increasing property values. When it comes to multi-family ROI research and number crunching, RPR is a great resource to tap into when you're working with commercial investment clients. The tools available to you in RPR, especially its collaboration with Valuate®, can help you assess a commercial investment in multifamily dwellings or buildings. Here's how to apply RPR Commercial to your multi-family research: Multi-Family Prospecting in RPR Commercial. Improve your commercial market forecast with RPR Commercial No matter what area you specialize in when it comes to commercial real estate, RPR Commercial can help. This digital tool, offered by the National Association of REALTORS®, offers practitioners access to 850K+ listings and 56 million+ off-market properties, allowing you to search, research and do your homework on commercial properties throughout the country. Plus, RPR offers indispensable, analytic tools such as Site Selection, Trade Area Reports, ROI and investment, and consumer segmentation demographics and data. As well as commercial comps, traffic counts and assessments, points of interest and climate risk assessment. Log in to RPR Commercial today for a successful tomorrow… and rest of the year! *References NAR Commercial Real Estate Market Insights NAR: Will the Commercial Market Hit the Reset Button in 2024? JP Morgan: Real Estate Commercial Trends Money & US News: The Commercial Real Estate Outlook CBRE: U.S. Real Estate Market Outlook 2024 What to Expect for CRE in 2024 Commercial Real Estate Trends for 2024 To view the original article, visit the RPR