Commercial Real Estate Listing Bulk Upload Pilot Program

Getting your listings in the right place can be a huge hassle.  At CIMLS.com we’ve designed online uploaders (great for folks with less than 20 listings) and direct XML feeds (great for folks with more than 100 listings) to make this process easier.  However, we’ve heard from many mid-sized brokerages that feel caught in the middle with 50-100 listings. 

To help you out we’ve designed a data import system around our favorite office tool – Excel. 

Our system is able to interpret your excel file, download resources from other places on the web (you just need to provide the links in excel) and your properties will automatically appear on CIMLS.com.  If you’d like to update listings simply update and resubmit the excel spreadsheet – our system will know which listings are new and which ones simply need to be updated. 

If you’d like to sign up for early access just let us know at support@cimls.com

The full data format we use is available below:

Column	Required	Description
URL		The URL of the listing website - be as specific as possible
Company Name		The name of the company listing the property
Company Logo		The logo of the company listing the property
Contact Full Name	required	The full name of the contact for the property listing
Contact Email	required	The email of the contact for the property listing
Contact Phone Number		The phone number of the contact for the property listing
Listing Title		The title of the property. If one isn't available write a description in less than 7 words
URL of Property Image		The URL of a picture of the property
Type of Property	required	The property must be fit into one of the following categories: retail, office, multi-family, industrial, shopping center, business park, industrial park, hotel, motel, health care, senior facilities, land, farm, ranch, forest, multi-use, storage, mobile home park, business, bed & breakfast, marina, resort, other
Property Street Address		The street address of the property. If they give a range of addresses (ie 10-20 test street) only use the first number. If there is a suite number (10 test street suite #50) include it at the end of the address as per the example
City	required	The city the property is located in
State	required	The state the property is located in - using only the two letter abbreviations
Zip*		The zip code the property is located in
Price*		The asking price for the property only if it is for sale. If it is for lease leave blank
Property Size (in sq ft)*		The total building square footage
Lot Size (Acres)*		The total lot or land size on which the building is located (in acres)
Financial Summary		Any financial information pertaining to the property
Property Income		The income of the property
Property Expenses		Any expenses of operating the property
Full Description		The full description of the property. This is the catch all for all information about the property - if you don't know where else to put information found in the listing include it in the full description field
URL of Attachments		The URLs of any documents included on the listing (such as flyers or financial documents)
Availability Type	required	If this property is available for sale, lease, or both sale and lease. The only three values that are allowed here are (sale, lease, both)
Min Sq. Ft. Available*		The minimum available square feet available for a leased property. If only one value is available use that for both min and max fields.
Max Sq. Ft. Available*		The maximum available square feet available for a leased property. If only one value is available use that for both min and max fields.
Min Rent*		The minimum rent charged for a leased property. If only one value is available use that for both min and max fields.
Max Rent*		The maximum rent charged for a leased property. If only one value is available use that for both min and max fields.
	*Notes:	no commas, symbols or units in any of these columns

Following Leads

Since we introduced the Leads and Activity Report to CIMLS.com our members have been making good use of this system to reach out to other members who expressed interest in their properties.  Through working with our members we’ve come up with a few steps that will lead to a greater response rate and higher conversion of these leads into clients.

1. Think About What They Want

Revisit the property the prospect viewed to determine if there is a theme?  Think about doing a Google search on the name to see if they are another broker or an investor?  Learning as much as you can will help you to:

2. Provide Attractive Options

The number one thing that turns off any email recipient is canned content.  Everyone is so innundated with spam that the instant they receive something non-personalized the brain shuts down.  The best way to rise above the email noise is to provide the lead with something specific to their needs.  If you were able to identify a property class/area the lead was interested a short note is very effective.

3. Channels

Even if the lead isn’t ready to buy at the moment, provided a channel such as a website/blog/twitter/linkedin that a user can connect to and receive updates is a great way to stay in the game.  If they connect they’ll receive updates from the system about your activities/updates.  Each of these serves as a little reminder to get engaged.

Putting it all together we get a short tailored email to turn a lead into a client:

<lead name>,

Thanks for visiting my property at <address>.  I noticed you took a look at a couple other <property type> properties in the <area> area.  It would be my pleasure to show you this and other properties in my portfolio such as <similar property>.

Thank you,

<your name>

<your website/blog/twitter/linkedin>

CIMLS List Once Launch

One of the biggest pain points for brokers is having to re-upload the listings multiple times to Commercial MLSs like CIMLS and to their own website.  We decided to make things easier with List Once.  Now any broker can use CIMLS.com to manage their listings in once place. Best of all – we are bringing this new service to all of our members for free!

Getting Started

All it takes to start using this feature is three simple steps

1. Connect to List Once by added the links from your CIMLS.com profile onto your website.  Now, any current listings you have on CIMLS.com should appear embedded on your website.

2. Add/Manage Properties on CIMLS.com. 

3. Drive customers to visit your listings in either location and enjoy never having to mess around with your website to add listings again!

Analytics

Since your listings are now connected with CIMLS.com you can access our Commercial Analytics Suite any time to see view counts or follow up with leads.

This is a great way to keep all of your online properties in synch and up to date.

Terry of The Phillips Group was brave enough to be the first commercial broker to give this a try.  You can see his great results here.

And if you have any questions we’re always happy to help at support@cimls.com.

Advertising to the Commercial Real Estate Community

Reaching the on the go folks in the Commercial Realty Community is always a challenge.  However, professionals are always looking for deals – so your message needs to fit into the deal flow.  That’s why CIMLS.com is now offering advertising programs.  Either on our homepage or embedded right in the listings our dynamic ad servers will make sure our members see your ad.  This is a great opportunity for any service provider from commercial brokers to auctioneers to commercial property managers. 

Homepage

If you’re a big firm or want to drive a lot of traffic quickly put your ad on our homepage. This will ensure everyone that visits CIMLS.com will see your brand and your message.

Geo-Targeted

Our regional banners are more appropriate for firms with a focused market.  We can target ads down to any state or major city you’d like.

Gold Membership

And finally, don’t forgot the gold membership.  In addition to having your listings appear at the top of any searches, you’ll be featured as a CIMLS Professional in our Directory

For the full sheet on what we can to for your business visit: Advertise on CIMLS.com

Commercial Property Data: Bigger and Better Records

We’ve seen some great success with folks using the CIMLS.com Comps Data we made available over the last few months, so now we are expanding the offering.  In addition to the vital data we are now running a pilot in Portland, OR of including a whole slew of new data.  The data is now up live on CIMLS.com, so if you just can’t wait go ahead and take a look here:

CIMLS Portland Comps

The rest of this post with cover four major areas of addition to our property records which will makes them the perfect one stop shop for all of your online commercial realty research. 

Social Media Activity

This is a brand new data point created by the analytics team at CIMLS.com. We’ve aggregated all of the social media buzz that happens around a location (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare etc.) and synthesized it into one easy to use number. The data is normalized on a scale of 100 with 50 being the city average. This makes it easy to identify a ‘hot’ area which is the source of a large amount of online traffic – potentially very attractive for retail or residential focused customers. This feature recently highlighted in an article by Chicago Ideas Week!

 

Neighborhood Demographics

In addition to the city demographics we originally offered, our data set has added the neighborhood level of granularity.  This empowers any investor or broker to instantly access and compare the vital statistics of a locality.  All of this data is indexed by its common neighborhood name – making the facts easy to identify and client ready.

 

Property Description with Local Data

We are especially proud of the property descriptions.  Now, in addition to the basic location and public record data, we’ve integrated local attractions, amenities, and parking locations.  This saves you the work of having to conduct multiple searches for each location.  This information is ready to include in any commercial office, retail, or multi-family building listings.

 

Neighborhood Description

Last, but not least, we include a written description of the neighborhood.  Often this prose is able to convey the feel of a location and highlight local selling points in a way the vital statistics can’t.

Go to Google for Commercial Property Photography

From our last post about creating Viral Commercial Property Listings.  I heard quite a few folks that it just takes too much time to get nice pictures.  All real estate folks are quite understandably busy, we turn to a simple, fast, and effective replacement: Google. Google has made a huge investment in making millions of images available to you – which fall into three categories:

Streetview

Google cars have roamed the streets of every major metro in the US taking pictures of pretty much everything – probably including your property!  By searching on the address and selecting street view (the human symbol on top of the + button on zoom) you can find some great images of a property fit for the front page of your flyer.  Here is the snapshot I took in PowerPoint of the same building we used in the Viral Commercial Property Listings post:

FlyOver

Once you zoom in enough with Satellite view selected Google will switch from strict overhead to a 45 degree flyover.  This is a great way to get some full shots of the building – especially if it is a large skyscraper.  The directional wheel at the top left of the screen enables you to select the direction you view the building from.  Often this is a great way to show of the best face of your office building or pick the best lighting for your retail space.

Overhead

Last, but not least, is the overhead view.  By far the most common feature of a commercial listing is just a simple map to convey to prospects the location of the property and the surrounding area.  If you’d like to add some highlights its as inserting the screenshot in PowerPoint, adding shapes, selecting the group of images, and selecting “save as picture”.

End Result

In about 20 minutes using only PowerPoint 2010 as my editing tool I easily translated the Google Images into:

While certainly not replacing the work of a professional, these images are certainly customer ready with minimal investment of dollars or time (both precious commodities).  Also, every CIMLS.com listing includes dynamic Google Streetview and Area Maps to make you life a little simpler.  Once you finish creating your listing on CIMLS.com we will automatically suggest a map and Streetview.  Just use the mouse to position your commercial property perfectly and every visitor to your online listing will see the property exactly as you left it.

3 Steps to Viral Commercial Property Listings

While much of the commercial inventory is sold broker to broker individual investors and owners are becoming more involved in the search process.  This presents an opportunity for anyone marketing a property to begin using traditional channels to reach a broader online audience to advertise their commercial listing.  The key to a successful online campaign is to craft easy to consume and attractive content to insert into the online channels.  The end goal is to get it shared with prospects.  From our work at CIMLS.com we’ve com up with three simple steps that anyone selling a property should follow to ensure their listing gets seen.

1. Take Great Pictures

The most sharable and attractive piece of media you can provide is a big beautiful image of your property.  This doesn’t require any fancy equipment – most simple cameras (and some phones) are capable of great pictures.  Just take the time to frame your property and make sure to include any special features or building highlights in the shot.  A great example of this comes from our of our Dallas, TX members.  These two images are from the same building.  Which one would catch your eye?

2. Enticing Property Descriptions

The second thing any prospect sees is the description of the building.  The goal is to keep it short (3-4 sentences) and to limit it to only aspects of the property that are not in the basic information section (size/address etc).  Convey the value of the location, other tenants, or even a building’s history.  The basic building fact sheet should capture the mind.  Use the prose description to capture a prospect’s heart by creating a emotional attraction to the property. 

3.Make it social.  Every time.

While make listing agents will try social networking once or twice – this is rarely fruitful.  Just like in your day-to-day business relationships and reputations online are built over time.  Pick a few channels (LinkedIn, craigslist, twitter, email) and post your properties every single  there.  This trains people to view those channels to hear about new opportunities. 

Once its out there get your colleagues, friends, or clients to vote it up one social (likes on Facebook, Google + votes, etc.) or get them to share it.  This will exponentially increase your properties visibility on those networks to reach their contacts and contact’s contacts. Just 2-3 votes go a long way to raise your listing above the noise on social networks and search engines.  On CIMLS.com we’ve made this easy with social links to print, share, and vote on listings right on our site.