1. WEB SUCCESS. James Lee, Principal at Kensington Realty Advisors, reports that his firm uses the web on a daily basis. "Almost all of our case submissions to Prudential for our PruExpress lending business or to pension funds for property acquisitions contain printouts of something from the Internet, such as news and financial information on tenants, demographic data, market information, GIS maps, etc. And at least one of us is generally on-line at any point in time tracking Treasury bond rate movements to advise borrowers who are close to locking rates on loans." Welcome the wired world.

2. NEW AND NOTABLE. Heitman Finance Group originates construction and permanent financing for commercial properties nationwide. CB Commercial Chicago is online with market research for the five offices in its market area. Bradford Realty Services, based in Dallas, TX, specializes in leasing, development and management. Tishman International specializes in the acquisition of retail, commercial and industrial properties worldwide.

Jones Lang Wootton, international real estate advisors, headquartered in London, features leasing guidelines for markets around the world. SelecTown is a helpful database of economic, demographic and facilities information for communities around the U.S., currently strongest in the Midwest, but growing. Compass Management and Leasing provides real estate services, including property and facilities management around the world. MRI, Management Reports, Inc., develops real estate software and outsourcing solutions for commercial and residential property managers.

3. NEW TOOLKITS. PikeNet Toolkits contain the best market research and listing information available in each market area. Denver and Detroit have been added this week. If you think that I have missed a site in these markets that should be included, please send me e-mail. To access all Toolkits, click "Toolkits" on the home page and then choose a city.

4. CREM SHUTS DOWN. . The Commercial Real Estate Marketplace (CREM) will close its service on June 30. CREM’s strategy had been to target large companies and market its service as a "backend" listings database. For providing this service CREM charged a monthly fee. CB Commercial and Koll selected CREM for test marketing, but neither put a large volume of listings online. CREM suggests that its customers consider Loop Ventures listing service, Loopnet. Like CREM, Loopnet has also targeted large organizations, e.g., SIOR, but Loopnet’s service is free and Loopnet already signed up dozens of groups. Loopnet derives revenue by selling banner advertising and hosting web sites.

5. ENHANCE YOUR LINK. In June more than 10,000 persons will visit PikeNet and click over 13,000 hyperlinks to visit other real estate sites. If you want to increase the chances that some of these visitors will go to your site, enhance your link. Enhanced Links are shown in bold and moved to the top of the page above unenhanced links. And Enhanced Links can also be listed in two categories, e.g., office and retail, or broker and property management. For complete details, go to http://www.pikenet.com/advertising/enhanced.html.

6. USING YAHOO TO PLOT BUSINESS LOCATIONS. Use Yahoo’s Yellow Pages function. You can create a map in minutes with business locations plotted. Print this map in color to include in a due diligence package, create driving directions or e-mail to a client. For complete instructions, click "Questions…How To" under "Toolkits" on the PikeNet home page.

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--Peter Pike