THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 5, 1996 TAG: 9606050408
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHANIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 70 lines
Real estate agents in Hampton Roads have begun showcasing their commercial properties on a new computer service, which lists everything from aging industrial lots to swank waterfront locations.
The Commercial Real Estate Council, part of the Tidewater Association of Realtors, began working with the computer database last year. Now, most of the organization's 260 members are using the system, and several local economic development officials also have expressed interest in the service.
``Our business is changing,'' said Al Carmichael, senior vice president at Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate and the council's president. ``People are expecting information much faster. They want everything immediately.''
Carmichael and others in the industry say the service will help speed up transactions and provide more up-to-date information.
The computer database, called Access to Commercial Real Estate, works this way:
On their computers, real estate agents plug in information about their commercial properties, such as price, address and the agent's name. They are responsible for updating their own listings.
If an agent's client wants to pinpoint a specific type of property, the computer database can sort by a number of variables. It can sift through industrial lots and retail properties. The computer also can sort by city, by price, building size, or acreage.
The computer can display a picture of the property and provide detailed information on area traffic counts, the number of parking spaces or even a building's ceiling height in some cases.
Agents once could get details on local commercial properties by scanning ``multiple listing'' books. But the information was sometimes outdated by the time the lists were published. The Tidewater Association of Realtors stopped publishing the commercial books in 1994.
Now, anyone can find information on commercial properties via the Internet. But the lists for specific markets are short, and details are few, said Jonathan Guion, an industrial specialist with S.L. Nusbaum Realty Co. and a director on the local council's board.
``By the time you narrow it down to the Hampton Roads marketplace, you might have one or two properties,'' Guion said.
The local real estate database, however, lists about 500 active commercial properties.
Before the service came out, many in commercial real estate simply did business the old-fashioned way: by driving by properties and then picking up the phone.
``Really, what everyone did was call around,'' Guion said.
The Hampton Roads commercial database is owned by the Tidewater Association of Realtors, which purchased the license for the service earlier this year.
The information is proprietary, so the public cannot access it without an agent's help. That may change, however. The council is looking to put the commercial listings on the Internet by the year's end.
Residential agents in Hampton Roads have been using a computer information service for years. Metro MLS Inc., a privately owned company in Virginia Beach, has about 4,000 real estate agents using its Compass service, said Dan Hudy, vice president of operations.
Sites on the Internet include local residential real estate listings, but they operate on a smaller scale, Hudy said. Metro MLS wants to list about 10,000 local properties on the information highway. Those local listings will be available in about two months through http://www.cyberhomes.com. < ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by Huy Nguyen
The Comercial Real Estate Council began working on the computer
service last year. "Our business is changing," says Al Carmichael,
senior vice president at Harvey Lindsay Commercial Real Estate and
president of the council. .... by CNB