Transaction Managers: Hot Items at the PikeNet Forum

Differing Agendas -- Part Two... This Dispatch continues last Monday's report on the PikeNet Forum, Why Is Real Estate E-commerce Like the Fashion Industry?, (May 7, 2001).

Transaction Management... As the industry grapples with how to reduce "friction," dozens of firms offer various digitized workflow applications.  These go by names like transaction management, e-procurement, workflow management, online lease administration, service order management, property management ASPs and more.  At the Forum, we heard from many of the leading players -- AssetEye, AvidXchange, BayLogics, Bricsnet, Business Integration Group, EggSystems, essention, FacilityPro, iBuilding, ManagePath, manageStar, MRI Systems, MyContracts, National Facilities Group, Peregrine, Protegic, SiteStuff, VirtualPremise, WestmarkHarris, WorkSpeed, workplaceIQ and Yardi.  Whew.  Each tells a compelling story about how its business model serves a specific need in the marketplace.  But how much the industry will pay for them to reduce "friction" remains to be seen.  Yet this is the type of service that may offer the greatest likelihood of transforming our industry.

Sales and Leasing Tools... Turmoil in the listing marketplace over the last year hasn't clarified the listings space very much.  CoStar remains the 800-pound gorilla with an increasingly rich suite of services.  The LoopNet/PropertyFirst merger is still defining its revenue model.  It's unclear what Octane's purchase of RealtyIQ means or how it might be included in Octane's proposed transaction management system.  And apparently Cushman & Wakefield still owns the underlying C&W database purchased by RealtyIQ, which defaulted in its payments.  Meanwhile, players like CityFeet, Storetrax and Xceligent continue to expand their listing services by product type and geography.  Plus you've got NetStruxr, Peracon, RealCapitalMarkets, RealPrompt and TenantWise offering buyer aggregation, buyer matching, discount leasing, and online marketing services.  How these all link to the new financing services offered by CapitalThinking, eMortgageDesk, MortgageRamp and Precept Mortgage might offer some intriguing possibilities of reducing "friction."  But tying any of these systems together is a hugely complicated task.

New New Things... Just when you think that you're getting your arms around these applications, you learn about even newer services represented at the Forum. ... RealCapitalAnalytics has just launched its service, which tracks individual investment properties nationwide from offering to closing for "real time" market research. ... ePensio is a web-based property management system launched by veteran owners intimately familiar with the operational challenges of managing a far flung portfolio of properties. ... Kedestra will soon launch its brand new collaboration tool for exchanging information within a local real estate market. ... The beat goes on.

--Peter Pike / ppike@pikenet.com