Low Expectations Leads to Low Interest

In a meeting late today the Federal Open Market Committee made an unprecedented move to hold the range for the federal funds rate of 0 to 1/4 percent “at least through mid-2013.  Citing ‘considerably slower’ economic growth than expected.

From the standpoint of commercial real estate investors this news holds some hope to increased liquidity to bolster relatively slow market movement along with the promise of a 2-year financing window.  The questions is, with unemployment remaining high what will the market for real estate be?  A silver lining may lie in the increase in investment in equipment and software which may help bolster the struggling industrial sectors.

Also, an interesting footnote in the report cites the lack of unanimous agreement of the FMOC on this action. The committee passed the action in a split decision  7 to 3 with the dissenting faction which would have ‘preferred to continue to describe economic conditions as likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for an extended period.

While receiving quite a bit of domestic scrutiny, this specific set of financial leadership is worth watching as their last major act, the TARP bailout, is on track to deliver $40 Billion in profit, to be handed over the the US treasury.  To date, this is the largest return on any Federal Reserve intervention to date. 

The full official FOMC release can be found here:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20110809a.htm

Bringing commercial listings to the street level

When working with brokers, the recurring theme we heard was “there is nothing better than seeing a property from the street". Taking this to heart, we sought to bring the next best thing to the web – Google Street View. Now, any owner or broker posting a property can add and orient a Google Street view to enable prospective buyers to take a ‘walk around’ and get a great sense of the building’s full appearance and the surrounding area.

So how does this work? When you type in the address for your listing the cimls.com property engine automatically locates your property using the Google Maps API and shows a preview of the Google Street View (below). Google often doesn’t get the orientation of the view or angle right, so we enable you to simply reposition the Street View just as you would on Google Maps. Once you have fixed the orientation of the Street View to best highlight your property we save this information and our engine will use this orientation to display the Street View for your listing.

Give it a whirl on your listings and let us know what you think!

Listing Page Upgrade

One of our primary goals at cimls.com is to present your properties in the best possible format online.  From conducting interviews with many of our members and reviewing traditional print formats we developed a new standardized listing format.  Now, visitors to your property can browse through a filmstrip of thumbnails to see different views of a Gold Member Listing such as floor plans and internal tours.

Additionally, we created a standardized list format for the critical information to the right of the image.  This list includes the name of the listing company in addition to a link to all of the member’s listings.  We found that this helps to enhance a buyer or leaser’s ability to browse the properties of specialized investors or brokers who may have many properties within a class of interest for the searcher. 

Finally, just below the main image, we added eight new social buttons to make sure that any prospect can share a listings with any of their advisors.  Its also worth mentioning, that these buttons can also be used by the listing agents to promote their property.  The more links to your page exist (on twitter, your homepage, facebook etc.), the higher ranked it will be in all search engine results. 

New CIMLS.com Homepage Format

Early last month we decided to update the look and feel of the cimls.com homepage to make it easier to navigate.  We took great steps to simplify the content on the homepage so visitors could easily focus on the primary function of cimls.com – our property search engine.  This builds on other, more progressive changes, such as moving the site to a 1000 pixel wide format and the addition of the login bar on the homepage.  We’ve seen this simplification drive up searches – which means more views for the listings of our members.  We’d love to hear what you think, so take a look at the new format and share your opinion in the comments below!