It was a real estate bonanza during the latest Fried On Business show. I had a couple of real experts on board – Mark Anes of CoStar and longtime friend Adam Von Romer, to talk about the value of the CoStar service and how to get started in commercial real estate.
Anes came to my office recently to demo CoStar, and I was – to put it politely – skeptical.
But he showed me how to accomplish in mere minutes what used to take hours utilizing a road map, copious amounts of gasoline and no small amount of time.
CoStar is a 30-year-old Internet company dedicated to commercial real estate research, Anes said. It has a market cap of $7 billion and more than 1,650 full-time researchers dedicated to building and maintaining their property databases.
CoStar catalogs 95 billion square feet of commercial space nationally, he said, and covers 83,000 properties in South Florida alone.
83% of all commercial real estate transactions in 2016 involved a CoStar user, Anes said.
Real estate is all about information arbitrage, and when you subscribe to CoStar Suite, boy to you have some information.
And, by the way, it’s not just about office space. CoStar covers the waterfront, so to speak, researching all commercial property types. They can be filtered and sorted by a variety of criteria.
Now, listen to this. Some 35% of all commercial real estate transactions are off-market, Anes said, and – you guessed it – CoStar has information on all of the off-market properties you could possibly want to investigate.
And in the unlikely event that you don’t see some vital piece of information about the property, you can simply email the researcher through a convenient link. If the property is not listed at all, as a CoStar subscriber you can have a researcher assigned to gather the data for you, he added.
CoStar is hiring like crazy, Anes said, and reinvesting heavily in its own operation.
“It all comes down to the content. We’re only as good as what’s available to our consumer base. You want to have the latest and greatest,” he said.
I can’t help thinking how much easier things would have been if CoStar had been around when I got my start in the business.
If you’re thinking about getting started in commercial real estate, by all means get a CoStar subscription, but also listen to the sage advice Adam Von Romer had to offer.
Von Romer, CCIM, has 33 years in the business. He is an author, speaker, seminar leader, real estate instructor, and licensed real estate broker. He has also been a mortgage broker, mortgage brokerage instructor, community association manager, and community association manager instructor.
Von Romer has the No. 1 best-selling book on Amazon in the commercial real estate field titled “Getting Started In Commercial Real Estate.”
It’s critical, he said, to find a good mentor. Get involved with a good company that trains and supports its recruits. The first three years are critical to your career development.
Then, he said, learn the market. Use CoStar, and also get out there and drive the market.
Next, be an expert. You must specialize. “You cannot have enough knowledge to be functionally conversant in all of the five major product types in all the markets and submarkets in South Florida and have the answer to those deal-killer problems. There’s just no way you can handle it,” he said.
Finally, become a CCIM. It’s the difference between being an average commercial real estate agent and taking your expertise to the next level, he said.
Von Romer said if anyone is thinking about making the jump from residential real estate to commercial real estate in South Florida, now is the time. Commercial real estate in South Florida, he said, is on the verge of a tremendous run because:
– Interest rates are ridiculously low.
– There’s a lot of product available.
– There’s a ton of “flight capital” entering the region.
– South Florida has a high population.
– South Florida has a rapidly dwindling supply of available land.
This was a show not to be missed. Click here to listen to the full episode.
Contact Mark Anes of CoStar Group at manes@costar.com.
Adam Von Romer is offering a free copy of his extensive training manual to anyone interested in transitioning to commercial real estate. Visit adamvonromer.guru or contact him at info@adamvonromer.com.
