Commercial IQ

We're a national commercial real estate marketplace, built by Catylist. We help connect buyers and sellers of commercial property through marketing and technology.


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    Commercial IQ Blog: New Functionality

    06-18-2009

    Catylist Spring Software Improvements


    Google Earth Integration & Commercial Property KML Export

    Google Earth is a great tool for visualizing the locations of commercial properties, allowing you to cover lots of ground without leaving your desk. We’ve integrated Google Earth directly into Commercial IQ and our local commercial listing services providing you 3D visualizations of the commercial properties on each site.

    You’ll just need to install the Google Earth plugin, then click on the “Earth” button at the top-right corner of any map, including search results and listing presentations.

    For those of you using the Google Earth desktop application or another GIS service, we’ve also added the ability to export commercial properties in KML format.

    Search Expired Listings

    Many of our users keep an eye on listing expirations and withdrawals as a way to prospect for leads. We put in some work to make this more efficient. You can now find links to search for “Expired” or “Withdrawn” listings on the “Comparables” search tab of any of our local CIEs.

    Improved Property Input & Administration

    We took another look at our property input interface to make the process smoother and more intuitive. We polished dozens of areas: adding more lease rate customization, improving the organization of the fields, adding simple warning messages when information is missing or incorrect. We also added a handy tool that allows administrators to generate a spreadsheet of listings that need attention, along with a description of the problem and the contact information for the listing agent. We hope this makes it easier to stay on top of your listings, keeping the data accurate and up to date.

    Thanks!

    As always, thanks for your excellent feedback and suggestions! Please don’t hesitate to contact us with your ideas to improve the service. We’ll be rolling out more great tools this Summer.

    By Catylist | Posted in New Functionality | Comments (0)
    02-25-2009

    Catylist Winter Software Improvements

    Stay on top of activity in your local market

    There’s a lot to keep track of in your local commercial real estate market. We’ve been hard at work on a new feature brings all the information you need together in one place. Now, when you log into Commercial IQ or your local Commercial Information Exchange (CIE), we pull together recent activity that will be of interest to you.

    Using your stored preferences (such as Offices for Sale or Lease in Ann Arbor, MI, etc), your Market Monitor will inform you when:

    • New hits and leads are generated for any of your listings
    • Properties are added, modified or removed from any of your catalogs or saved searches
    • Newsletters, documents and more are posted by your CIE administrator
    • Events are added or occurring within 7 days for your CIEs
    • Commercial Real Estate news articles are posted on dozens of sites
    • Matching properties are added or modified to your CIE
    • Matching “Wants/Needs” are posted
    • Matching property emails are broadcasted
    • Matching comparables (recent sale/lease transactions) are added

    You can also receive automatic notifications of all of this information either daily or weekly via email or RSS/Atom so that you never miss a deal.

    Log in now and make sure your preferences reflect the types of properties and locations you’re interested in. If you’re new, create a free account — it only takes a minute.

    Thanks!

    As always, thanks for your excellent feedback and suggestions! Please don’t hesitate to contact us with your ideas to improve the service.

    By Catylist | Posted in New Functionality, Technology | Comments (0)
    10-28-2008

    Catylist Fall Software Improvements

    Example Reports
    Click to view…



    New and improved PDF Reports

    We know how important it is to be able to hand your clients professional looking materials, and we’ve spent the last couple months completely overhauling our PDF brochures and reports using all the great suggestions we’ve been receiving. Here are the highlights:

    • We spent a lot of time on general beautification: minimizing white-space and increasing data-density, eliminating overflow, making pages break efficiently, using better fonts and spacing.  All of the reports will now look much more professional.
    • We’ve doubled the number of items (listings/properties/comparables) that can be contained in a report.
    • The single-page and multi-page formats now have an option to include demographics and/or market statistic summaries.  These can be enabled when customizing a report.
    • If you’re generating a multi-page brochure for a listing, you can now choose to include any/all/none of the uploaded attachments.  These will show up at the end of the same PDF.
    • In addition to manually changing the order via drag-and-drop, you can now set a sort order for each report using common fields like: Date Added, Property Type, Location (State/City), Price, Size, Number of Units, Status, Cap Rate, Zoning, Agent Name (Last/First), and Company Name.
    • Pages are now automatically numbered.
    • The new platform is faster and more reliable.
    • We’ve enabled several more report formats for comparables — they should have the same options as listing reports now.

    You can check them out by clicking the “Generate PDF Brochure” link on any listing, or clicking the “Create Report” button at the top of search results.

    Better support for Industrial properties

    In order to make the database more useful for industrial specialists, we’ve incorporated core industrial fields like ceiling height, loading docks/doors, etc. throughout the system.

    • Added industrial-specific fields to listing search results and most reports.
    • Ceiling height values are now stored as a range of a minimum (clear height) and maximum value, which allows users to search more accurately.
    • We also added many additional building details to comparables — you’ll notice those on overview pages and the various report formats.

    Easier link-building for SiteLinks

    SiteLink is our customizable search engine, ready for instant integration into company websites. We’ve tweaked our search API to make it easier for SiteLink clients to deep-link to results pages.  Here are a couple examples:

    Return all sale listings:
    http://signatureassociates.catylist.com/listings/sale

    Return office listings for a particular City:
    http://signatureassociates.catylist.com/listings/office?location=Detroit,MI

    SiteLink company administrators can view some examples on the “Integration Tips” page, linked
    from their console.

    Miscellaneous

    • Agent and company information now display in the expanded version of listing search results.
    • We’re now doing a better job validating email addresses, so as to avoid bounced communications.  Users with bad email addresses will be prompted to correct them when logging in.

    Thanks!

    Thanks for your excellent feedback and suggestions.  Please don’t hesitate to contact us with ideas.

    By Catylist | Posted in New Functionality, Technology | Comments (1)
    08-07-2008

    Catylist Summer Software Improvements

    Notes from the latest round of upgrades:

    Search for Off-Market Properties

    A growing number of our CIE clients are choosing to give their communities an affordable alternative for research data and statistics by building out local databases with not only active sale/lease listings and comparables, but also records for every property in their market. If you’re a Full Access member of one of our research-enabled commercial information exchanges, you can now search the database of off-market properties alongside active listings.  You’ll see an “Off-Market” option along-side “For Sale” and “For Lease” when searching.  Off-Market properties can be compared, emailed, mapped, and used in reports just like listings.  Note: Property records must be considered “verified” to be searchable.

    Chicago CDB Property Search

    Improved Lease Searching

    Lease searches will now return individual records for each matching space instead of a single record for each building with matching space. This will make the results (and subsequent printable reports) more accurate and eliminate much of the “why was this returned?” confusion. We’ve also improved the display of multiple suites within a building.

    Better Profile Pages

    Having an impressive online resume is a good way to get new business.  We spent some time cleaning up the profile pages on our sites (agent and company). You should notice lots of little improvements to both the search and display sections.  Here’s a good example: http://www.commercialiq.com/agent/17913

    SiteLink Upgrades

    SiteLink is our very affordable service that builds a listing search engine into your company website, which is extremely convenient if your listings are already in one of our CIE databases.  We’ve made several significant changes:

    1. We’ve integrated much of the new search technology into the sites.  Results are returned in List View, with a Map View option.  There’s a expandable filters-section at the top that can be used to manipulate the results.
    2. The front pages have also been given a make-over: There’s now a quick email form which should help generate leads for each SiteLink company.  Also, if a company has one or more agents with transactions being featured on their professional profiles, the most recent will now display on the front page.
    3. Users can now email listings to interested parties and generate property reports directly from the SiteLink site.

    Our EDCLink service for economic development communities and MediaLink service for local publications that wish to display commercial property have also been similarly upgraded. Here are a few examples:

    CIE Manager improvements

    It can be hard work managing a database of users, companies, listings, properties, transactions, etc. and we’ve made numerous changes to our tools to make life easier for CIE and company administrators.

    1. The speed for listing searches should be greatly improved.
    2. Search pages for users, companies, listings, transactions, and properties have been overhauled.  You can now jump to any record quickly using the Catylist ID, and we’ve created a list of common search links to save you time.
    3. We’ve also added a feature to the listing searches allowing you to search for listings that are missing a particular value — useful to see all listings without Ceiling Height, for example.  We’d picked a few important fields for now, but can expand this easily by request.
    4. CIE administrators can now edit company admin usernames and passwords.

    Marketing Tools, News Updates

    A key part of the value of Commercial IQ and our local CIEs is the tight integration with various marketing tools, which were just given an overhaul. We also added a comprehensive list of online distribution sites where members can automatically send their listings.

    We added a section to the front page of Commercial IQ that tracks recent activity on the site: national industry news, Catylist updates, listings, and posted wants.  We’ll be expanding on this idea in the near future, and integrating it in some fashion into our CIEs.

    Miscellaneous

    • Loading Docks, Loading Doors, and Ceiling Height have been added to the expanded summary view in search results, and to the summary report.  This was highly request by ChicagoCDB and several other industrial-specialists.
    • The default zoom on re-geocode pages is now closer, so users don’t have to zoom in several times to see where to click.
    • We’ve patched several changes to the map view and polygon functionality lately.  It should be working better.
    • The real estate services directory on our local CIEs should now be much more intuitive.

    Thanks!

    As always, thanks for your excellent feedback and suggestions.

    By Catylist | Posted in New Functionality, Technology | Comments (0)
    07-10-2008

    Building a better source for Commercial Real Estate news

    Trying to keep up with current industry news is tough, even with handy tools like feed readers.

    We’ve wanted to add news streams with current commercial real estate headlines to our sites for quite a while, but were having trouble deciding which source was best (most relevant, most current, etc).  Eventually, we realized that being forced to choose between fragmented news sources was an industry-wide frustration.

    Why can’t we just see ALL the news?

    There really isn’t one best source.  Each publication or blog is good at a particular type of reporting, or specializes in a certain type of story or industry segment.  What we really needed was a way to pull ALL of the news together. Luckily, with the help of recent syndication technologies, we were able to do this in a matter of hours.

    Quick Introduction to Yahoo Pipes

    Yahoo released a very powerful service last year that allows you to mash-up content from various sites, filter or manipulate it, then repackage it.  It gave us an easy way to take news feeds from all the major sources and combine them into a single feed.  It’s really an amazing application and very useful for anyone who monitors lots of feeds, even if you’re not technically-inclined.

    The finished product

    So after a little post-processing to handle feed idiosyncrasies, remove duplicates, etc. we have a glorious aggregated news feed:

    http://www.commercialiq.com/news/

    Each story links to the original source for the full version, so we’re really just acting as a comprehensive search engine for CRE news.  Also notice that you can subscribe directly to this consolidated feed — much better than having to subscribe individually to 15+ sources!

    Next steps

    Now that we have all the news together, the next logical step is to allow readers to choose which bits they care about. We’ll be working on various customization options (location and keyword filters, etc) in the near future.

    Let us know what you think, or if you have any other sources you’d like to see us add to the list.

    By Paul Brockmeyer | Posted in New Functionality, Technology | Comments (0)
    06-01-2008

    World’s Most Powerful Search Engine for Commercial Real Estate

    After months of research, development, and usability testing, we’ve finally released what we believe is an amazing leap forward in search engine technology for commercial real estate.

    Screenshot
    Screenshot

    Here are a few of the features:

    • See both your search criteria and results on the same page
    • Refine results in real time by adding custom search filters
    • Quickly scan large numbers of results using the compact list view option
    • Toggle between a List and a Map of your results
    • Intelligent location options let you select your geography using a keyword, using the map, or by drawing a polygon
    • Dig into the full property details without leaving the search
    • Sort forwards and backwards using a wide variety of parameters
    • Save your search criteria for later, or run saved searches all from within the search page

    Try it out

    Read on for the press release…

    Read More »

    By Catylist | Posted in New Functionality, News, Technology | Comments (0)
    05-20-2008

    New Listing Presentations, Demographics and Market Statistics

    We’ve just released some enhancements!

    Listing Overview

    Screenshot

    We’ve updated the Listing Overview page to provide added context:

    • View contextual Demographics and Market statistics right on the listing page (for Full Access Users)
    • See the property in fullscreen Google Street View (where available) with links to Microsoft Bird’s Eye aerials
    • We now show all details and attachments upfront (no more “View All Details” button)
    • Link Directly to your listing. Copy & Paste link into your emails to clients and prospects
    • Links to our new “Property History” page, which displays all listings and comps for a particular address

    Demographic Statistics

    Screenshot

    Our newly integrated demographics information allows you to perform quick and reliable market analysis. Our information is provided by SRC, an industry leading demographics company. Demographics greatly enhance your marketing presentations and provide you and your clients with an array of contextual information.

    • Automatically embedded on Listing and Comparables pages
    • Can be exported as PDF or Excel files

    Market Statistics

    Screenshot

    What’s the average lease rate per sq. ft. for office space in your market area? How many square feet of shopping center space is currently available in your market? The addition of our new Market Statistics* will help you to quickly answer these types of questions and will provide you with a snapshot of current market conditions.

    • Automatically embedded on Listing and Comparables pages
    • Statistics are available for any location with more than 100 listings
    • Can be exported as PDF or Excel files

    *All market statistics are compiled using available listing information in the Catylist database for any given market area based on broker loaded data.

    Marketing Report

    Screenshot

    The marketing report is an excellent communication tool for you to share online activity information with your clients. The new report, linked from the promote page, includes:

    • A list of marketing channels that the listing is being marketed on
    • Channel-by-channel viewing statistics
    • If desired, a custom message from the listing agent to the client

    And finally, Quick-Edit is now full-screen, and supports suites.

    By Paul Brockmeyer | Posted in Marketing, New Functionality | Comments (0)
    02-26-2008

    Welcome Commercial IQ!

    We’ve just release a new national marketplace for commercial property, and a whole bunch of enhancements to our existing sites. Here are some of the more significant changes/additions:

    New National Website – Commercial IQ

    Screenshot

    Some Background

    We at Catylist have spent the past 6+ years working to empower local real estate associations — allowing them to maintain and control a local marketplace rather than just shipping their data off to a national vendor.  We’ve built CIEs (Commercial Information Exchanges — the equivalent of a Commercial MLS) for over 30 associations around the country, which is more than any other vendor.  Besides all the normal MLS features, these exchanges also allow sophisticated email marketing, syndication of listing data to various local and national distribution points (listing aggregators, media outlets, economic development communities), etc.

    We’re very pleased to announce the launch of our new National CIE: Commercial IQ, located at www.commercialiq.com. Commercial IQ offers all the great functionality and integrated marketing tools as our local CIE websites and will be heavily promoted to investors, users, tenants and commercial real estate professionals across the country to provide your listings with increased marketing exposure. Listings and professional profiles of full-access CIE members will automatically display on Commercial IQ.

    This new Commercia lIQ site is a way to give those local groups some additional national exposure, on their terms.

    Listing Overview Revamp

    When you click on “view details”, the page will expand to include all listing detail as well as links for all file attachments. Additional links and custom CIE links, i.e. Assessor data, can be found under ‘View all Attachments”.

    Local Exchange Overhaul

    Screenshot

    Based on your feedback, we have made some significant changes to your CIE Website, including more intuitive navigation, a wider screen width, and easier access to commonly used functionality.

    We’ve completely revamped the “My CIE” section. Log into your CIE website and immediately access everything you need to search, market and close deals faster than ever before.

    From MY CIE, you can:

    Screenshot

    • Add and edit property listings
    • Perform local and national searches
    • Save searches and catalogs
    • Manage your account info, edit your professional profile, email preferences, password and more
    • Access various marketing tools at special CIE member rates, including Catylist CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Cmail Marketing (Email Marketing Network), Custom Brochures & Flyers, Floor & Site Plan Cleanup, Company & Property Websites, and Much More
    • Enter listings one time and send to Catylist partner websites, including: Commercial IQ – Catylist’s NEW National Exchange!

    Integrated CIE Listing Management

    In an effort to simplify the listing process, members adding or managing their listings may now do so directly from the CIE instead of going to market.catylist.com. To manage your listings from the CIE, simply log in and click the “My Listings” button that appears in the navigation bar under the header. Also, members may edit their account and profile directly from the CIE. To do this, log in and click the “My Account” button in the navigation bar under the header.

    Bulk-edit Interface

    We’ve replaced the existing quick-edit functionality with a more functional online spreadsheet. You can now customize which fields show up on the spreadsheet, and save these preferences for future use.

    By Catylist | Posted in New Functionality | Comments (0)
    10-12-2007

    More Exposure for Listings, Usability Enhancements

    More Exposure for Your Listings

    Screenshot

    In addition to Google, REBusinessonline.com, CIMLS and the Zana Network, you can now display your listing information on Lyco/Oodle, one of the Web’s largest classifieds networks.
    We’ve also changed the “Promote” listing page to display logos for local distribution channels, including: France Publication regional websites, Economic Development websites (where applicable), and other distribution points that are specific to your local market.

    Make Sure Your Listings are Getting Maximum Exposure:

    • Go to http://market.catylist.com
    • Login with your username/password.
    • Click “Manage Property Listings”
    • Click “Promote” next to the listing you want to send.
    • Click “Find Out More” to distribute your listing to the appropriate website.

    Specify Display Order of Attachments & Lease Suites

    Screenshot

    You can now change the order in which uploaded listing attachments (including images) as well as suites for lease appear.

    How it Works:

    • Click the appropriate link under CIE Content Manger.
    • Use the corresponding arrows to move the document higher or lower on the list or drag and drop to the desired position.

    NEW Printable Comparison Report

    Screenshot

    We’ve added a new report that mimics the “compare” feature of the site. You can generate a printable PDF report that compares up to four properties per page in a side-by-side format. Just a reminder: You be logged in to create reports.

    Auto-Populate Property Location

    When adding a new listing, just enter the postal code and we’ll auto-fill the city and state.

    Lease Pending for Suites

    Screenshot

    You now have the ability to mark individual suites as lease pending.

    How it Works:

    • Click “Manage Property Listings”.
    • Click “Edit Listing”.
    • Click “Space” tab.
    • Click “Lease Pending” link next to the appropriate suite.

    Have Questions?

    Contact the Help Desk at 877.595.5478 or help@catylist.com

    By Paul Brockmeyer | Posted in New Functionality | Comments (0)
    07-12-2007

    Lead Generation and RSS Feeds

    Single Search for Local & National Listings

    From your CIE website, you now have the option to include national listings in your search criteria.

    Users who are logged in can choose to:

    • Search listings from ALL sources nationally
    • Search local CIE member listings only

    Improved Tracking & Lead Generator

    The graphs and stats now use a more descriptive site name instead of a URL, and we’re tracking hits that come specifically from third party partners, including:

    • Google Base
    • MyNextDeal
    • REBusinessOnline.com
    • Zana Network

    We’ve added a new section that allows you view a list of members who have shown some level of interest in your listing. The list is compiled using the following criteria:

    • Who has viewed the listing?
    • Who has emailed it?
    • Who has it cataloged?
    • Who’s searching with parameters that match the listing?

    Only members who are logged in will be included on the list.

    Redesigned Broadcast Emails

    We’ve created a new HTML broadcast email template. The new version includes a cleaner layout, more records per page and improved subject lines.

    Easier Listing Exposure

    You can now opt in ALL of your listings to a distribution channel (Google Base, MyNextDeal, etc.) instead of one at a time.

    Time-Out Feature Added

    To avoid losing unsaved data when editing a listing, you will now receive a notification that your session is about to time-out. Please make sure to save your changes often.

    RSS Feeds

    Track an RSS feed from any listing search you run on our sites. To access the feeds, click the “Feed” link at the top right of searches and add it to your favorite news reader. As new listings come on, the feed will automatically update.

    Miscellaneous

    • By popular request, you can now enter zip codes when running searches rather than choosing them from a list. Multiple zips can be entered, separated by commas.
    • We’ve added character counts for most of the text entry areas in Market.Catylist so you know how much room you have left. We’ve also made several of the areas wider, where possible.
    By Catylist | Posted in Marketing, New Functionality | Comments (0)
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