A Dog Year's Worth of Hot Sites:
PikeNet's First Four Months

Note for past subscribers, this week's Dispatch is in a different format. The Dispatch is a single story. It's a look back at the really good sites and services that I've covered since PikeNet was launched in March.

PikeNet... As I reflect back on PikeNet's launching just over four months ago on March 21, 1996, it's hard to remember not publishing a web site. Is it true that life on the net is measured in dog years? What did I do in my previous life? Operating a web site requires an extraordinary amount of focused effort: developing content, revising the design, and troubleshooting technology problems. It could be a 24-hour a day commitment, if humans and dogs did not need sleep. Fortunately, they do.

Traffic... Each month traffic at PikeNet grows an average of 20%. In the month of July, I calculate that PikeNet had almost 6,000 visits. Banners at PikeNet are seen a total of 30,000 times per month by professionals around the world. Each of these visitors is one click away from visiting an advertiser's site. Every week this PikeNet Dispatch goes out to over 1,200 commercial real estate practitioners, and the list grows at 200 per month.

Brokers... Real estate sites on the web have evolved rapidly over the past four months. Where it was difficult to find ten really good sites for real estate brokers in April, today 17 out of 187 U.S. brokers boast four or five-star rated sites. Marcus & Millichap sweeps its database every night and puts up new listings. The Whittier Partners Group in Boston features maps with its listings. Starboard Commercial of San Francisco posts pictures and e-mail addresses for all its agents. CB Commercial incorporates a search engine to enable visitors to find the information they need. Internationally, a few major firms have implemented very good sites, including DTZ Debenham Thorpe and King Sturge & Co. in Europe and Richard Ellis (Pte) Singapore.

Owners... In recent months major institutional asset managers like PM Realty, Compass Retail and LaSalle Partners have put up very strong sites. National trades associations like ICSC and NAREIT have terrific sites which actively promote their services to members and the public. REITs have embraced the web to communicate with stockholders and real estate professionals alike: for example, Burnham-Pacific, Franklin Properties, Associated Estates and Beacon Properties.

Listing Services... Listing sites (last count: 42 in the U.S.)
continue to expand rapidly. LoopNet has signed up over two dozen CCIM chapters and commercial real estate associations around the US as the preferred listing service for their members. CRE-NET, sponsored by GE Capital, has heavily promoted its site in the print media. Niche listing services focus on more narrowly defined markets, like ViRED in Colorado which creates maps on the fly. Office Space Online, which covers Seattle and Denver, keeps its database up to date by generating faxes to owners who have not confirmed the monthly
status of vacant space. The Bates Foreclosure Report will
automatically notify you when properties meeting your criteria are added to their database. Innvest specializes in the hotel industry with both listings and resources. Overseas the Australian Property Web is a first class listing service and resource directory.

New Featires... Innovative new services are added weekly. iRealty has just put up a site that allows firms and individuals to create web pages and e-mail accounts online, and even enables a user to be paged if he receives an e-mail. The Shopping Center Bulletin Board offers the visitor the ability to locate properties at other shopping center sites: for example, the Hahn Company and the Kranzco REIT. Real-Jobs and Realbank are two new job and resume posting services just for the real estate industry.

Future... Who knows exactly where this will all end up? As William Gibson, who coined the term "cyberspace," said recently, "I imagine that the World Wide Web and its modest wonders are no more than the (TV) test pattern for whatever the 21st century will regard as the equivalent medium. Not that I can even remotely imagine what that medium might actually be."

Glad to have you online, and thanks for your support.

--Peter Pike /