#1 in Commercial Real Estate Online

Harvey Green, of Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services, and Nicholas Schorsch, of American Realty Capital, discuss commercial real estate.

CNBC Video (Airtime: Mon. Apr. 27 2009 1:42 PM ET):


Slide Excerpts:

Deutsche Bank Commercial RE Q1 2009: Commercial Real Estate at the Precipice


Also: Tyler Durden (no, not that Tyler Durden) over at Zero Hedge breaks down the One Trillion Commercial Real Estate Time Bomb.

Looking back, here's a MIT paper from 2006 analyzing 100 years in Manhattan commercial real estate prices: "adjusting for inflation, commercial office property values are 30% lower in 1999 than they were in 1899. Secondly, within any decade values often rise and fall by 20-50% in real terms."

The comScore numbers for March 2009 show that we increased our lead in average unique monthly visitors to 7.5x that of any other commercial real estate listing service during Q1 2009. That's up from the Q1 2008 average of 4.4x the unique visitors of any other service. More here.

Get a piece of the action. Add your property to LoopNet.

• Survey: CRE Hopes Cautiously Rising. [GlobeSt]
• In this market, while the monopolistic big box investors known as REITs suffer, the individual entrepreneur can thrive. [New HavenCRE]
• Kirkland's to close 35 to 40 stores in FY09. Full list. [Traffic Court]
• Moody's: Hotel market weakest, Multifamily construction negative demand. [Moody's]
• CRE professionals: How to deepen relationships during downturns. [Global Real Estate Monitor]
• A Conversation with Robert Shiller. [McKinsey]
• BofA's CRE loans starting to go sour. [NYTimes]
• GE's ("Most Conservative CRE player") Real Estate Losses on Portfolio of 8,000 properties [RealPropertyAlpha]
• Creative financing ideas for brokers and investors. [Journal Record]
• Commercial Real Time Bomb Goes Off But No One Notices. [Mish's]
• Federal Reserve Succumbing to Commercial Real Estate Lobbying. [ForexHound]
• RCA: General Growth’s bankruptcy filing will worsen the decline in property values [Real Capital Analytics]

• Vacancies Soar In Commercial Real Estate Bust. [Mish's]
  Real Capital Analytics: Q1 2009 CRE sales plunge 70% to $47B. [bizjournals]
• Bargain prices could help US commercial real estate market recover. [Property Wire]
• Different takes on General Growth Properties' bankruptcy. [TrafficCourt]
  Sam Zell on commercial real estate. [Real Property Alpha]
• Real Estate Industry Wants Expanded TALF Program. [Square Feet]
• Forecast: CRE Debt Market to Stagnate for 10 Years. [Dirt Lawyer]
• Krugman: Commercial real estate is coming apart at the seams. [NYTimes]
  

SEO leverages the potential of “free” search--the natural, organic search results that appear, for example, in the main, lefthand column on the page of search engine Google when someone searches for companies or properties. The results link directly to Web sites with content that best matches the searcher’s request, as interpreted by the search engine’s algorithms. These listings can’t be bought; you have to earn your way up the rankings based on the relevance of your web site’s content, depth, frequency of update and--crucially--the number of third-party sites linking to yours.

While it takes time and effort (a cost to your company) to earn high placement, when someone clicks on your naturally ranked Google listing on a search results page, Google doesn’t charge you a fee.

SEM, on the other hand, is paid advertising, but with a few twists. In the case of Google, SEM ads appear at the top and on the righthand side of search results pages. You can often buy your way to the top of paid-search rankings by outbidding other advertisers with keyword-based ads that are related to terms searched by Google users, but other factors also influence the ranking of your paid ads, including their click-through rate and quality score. (I’ll explain these concepts in more detail in future posts.)

Both SEM and SEO require a long-term, continual commitment to testing and refining techniques for improved rankings, but can reward those making the investment with a steady stream of high-quality prospects. As tenants, investors and brokers increasingly begin their search for commercial properties with a search engine query, the importance of mastering this marketing channel is growing rapidly.

As your company develops its strategy to benefit from these alternatives, you might start by searching for your property listings or services on Google or Yahoo! and see where you rank today.

(image: Universal Picutres)

For the part of you that always wanted to run a casino:

Link: http://listing.loopnet.com/16186243

Las Vegas visitation rates slipped 8% in Feburary leading to an average daily room rate of $99.25, a 22.9 percent decline from last year. MGM's much publicized CityCenter project is reportedly near bankruptcy. But it's all gotta come back, right? Isn't Vegas the place where luck can change fast? Is now the time to invest in Las Vegas commercial real estate?

Take the poll:

CNBC Video:

"For the first time in my life, you can buy for less than the cost of building."

We’re pushing out some new features tonight based on some great suggestions from folks like you. These new features will help you stay on top of all the different activity that occurs in the LoopNet marketplace.

Previously when you wanted to track properties you were interested in, you had to save it to My Saved Properties in My LoopNet and check on it every day. Tonight we’re upgrading the Save Property feature and calling it “Watch This Property.”

Watch This Property is a new way for you to keep tabs on properties you’re interested in. When properties you’re watching are updated, we’ll send you an email alert. If you’re familiar with eBay, it’s just like their “watch this item” feature. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to LoopNet.com and start your search.


2. From search results, click view a listing profile.


3. From any listing profile, click “Watch this Property” to save it to My Watch List (previously called My Saved Properties).

(click image to enlarge)

4. That’s it! LoopNet will send you a Watch List Alert email to notify you of key changes such as price reductions, new availabilities, RecentSales comparables, etc.

(click image to enlarge)

Try it out and let us know what you think! It’s super easy and free. Here are a few examples of how we think this feature will benefit you:

• Finding out that the price was just reduced on an apartment for sale you’re watching encourages you to follow up with the listing broker. If you're marketing property on LoopNet, now your price reductions will get the attention they deserve.
• Discovering that a RecentSales comparable record was just added to an office building for sale property you’re watching helps you value the property and make a decision.
• Being notified that another space for lease was just added to the retail property for lease you’re watching gives you another option to consider.

Watch This Property will make staying abreast of market changes much easier so that you can focus on closing deals.

At the bottom of listing profiles, you’ll also find a new section that provides additional information about the property:



You can now quickly understand what’s going on instead of having to visit different parts of the site to find out everything about a property. The additional information section tells you if anything else is being sold or leased at the property, if this property has been sold before and links you to supplemental details sourced from public and county records. We hope this will help you evaluate properties faster.

We’re also introducing a Recent Updates section towards the bottom of the My LoopNet page which helps to organize your experience at LoopNet:



It’s starting out with just listing updates to properties in My Watch List but it’s going to grow into a stream of all types of personalized, relevant updates that tell you what you need to know about what's happened since your last visit to LoopNet.

It's great that technology such as the internet continues to greatly reduce the cost of accessing and publishing information. What were once isolated pockets of data are now universally accessible. Remember when you had to drive down to the assessors office to find property info? But individuals are increasingly faced with too much information that begs to be filtered and organized. The information age has quickly become the "information overload age." The new features we're launching tonight all touch on the need during these times to bring clarity to what can be confusion, find the signals in the noise. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed creating them!

We aim to continue making all things commercial real estate easier for you. Make sure to let us know what you think by posting a comment below or clicking Contact Us at the bottom of every LoopNet page.

If you've been following this blog, you know we're starting to see a lot more distressed properties being listed for sale on LoopNet. We also took a look at LoopNet listings that have had a price reduction in the last 90 days (as a percentage of total active listings) broken out by MSA and property type. Here's what we found:

Take a look at our chart of the day:

(click image to enlarge)

Does this information help you get a sense for what's going on in these markets? What else would you like to see? Post a comment below.