When you look for a new house, the first port of call is no longer the estate agents office for many. With websites such as Zoopla, Rightmove and many more, anyone looking to buy residential property can do it from the comfort of their own home. However when it comes to commercial property, it isn’t quite so simple with the search facilities far less advanced….. Until now. Commercial property is now taking a big leap with the online search in America.
RealMassive is a company who have launched a new service to allow people to search for commercial properties in real time. The idea of this is to “help commercial real estate professionals collaborate and streamline their marketing efforts while gaining critical insight into the performance of their space and buildings”. It is currently stated that the site gives coverage of over 3.3 billion square feet of commercial property including offices, industrial buildings, land, medical offices and retail properties which is available for lease. Simply select the area and type of property you wish to see and the site brings up a map showing the locations of anything available.
The beta of this site has been running for a while now and is constantly expanding across the US.
The programme was developed and first launched in Austin, Texas about 3 years ago where RealMassive’s headquarters are located. The company is expanding rapidly across the U.S. though with founder Joshua McClure saying recently, “It is prudent for us to get as broad as fast as we can”.
The speed of expansion is already evident as given that it is only in the early stages of its life, the site already allows for searches to be made for many areas in America. Markets which are currently benefitting from RealMassive’s real-time service include; Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Greensboro/Winston-Salem, Houston, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Orlando, Orange County, Providence, Raleigh-Durham, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco and Tampa.
Not resting there, they have announced this week that the site will now include the commercial markets for both Memphis and Nashville and that the service will go live in Portland and Seattle on 9th February 2015.
Being early days in many of their current markets, the coverage in their hometown of Austin Texas is much more advanced Features there include hosted real-time market surveys that enable property owners, brokers and tenants to collaborate throughout the search process; real-time notification when spaces come off the market and custom marketing channels.
Rolling out these advanced features across all their markets will surely help anyone involved commercial property transactions communicate better and shorten the process as a whole.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, the founder of this start up company, Joshua McClure said that they anticipate expanding the current service available by listing properties for sale as well as lease. Not only that but they have been working for over a year now on the Big Apple; New York, with plans to launch this market in 2015. With the support of a billionaire it would appear that this venture is only going to go from strength to strength. There have already been demands for this service to be made available in Argentina and Brazil, and McClure has said that they are very interested in looking into the London market.
RealMassive’s idea certainly appears to be popular in the States and it is understandable why. With tools such as this at your finger tips, searching for and even conducting commercial property transactions is likely to become much more streamlined. Hopefully the company will be focusing on London and the UK soon and easy online property searches will no longer be the sole domain of the residential market.