Crowd sourcing lease comparables
Crowd sourcing lease comparables site, CompStak was founded by 29 year old Michael Mandel because “commercial real estate information should be available and transparent, and because most commercial real estate technology is from the Flinstones era.”
The video above demonstrates the site which is a marketplace for commercial real estate lease deal information currently launched in New York City. “The segment of NYC real estate that I’m most interested in, is office space for tech startups,” Mandel told weareNYtech.com “Tech startup real estate has been one of the strongest drivers of NYC office space in the past year, and I think it will continue to make a big impact in 2012.”
As a startup serving startups, that is simply the starting point for CompStak – if and when the company goes national or international, the commercial leasing scene will look a lot like residential real estate did when the MLS book went away and information went public. There will be tears shed, there will be anger and dismissal, but consumers who are accustomed to transparency in all other fields will expect it from commercial leasing, and CompStak will be there to meet them.
According to CompStak, how it works is commercial real estate brokers and appraisers submit the lease comps that they have to find the comps they need. When CompStak users submit a comp they receive points. They may then use these points to buy other comps. This results in CompStak compiling a comprehensive database of all of the commercial lease deals completed in a given market. This information is fully searchable, and is resold to commercial real estate owners, investors, asset managers, developers, appraisers, real estate services firms, and others.
It will be interesting to watch the reactions as the more innovative commercial agents jump aboard and others decide transparency is unnecessary.
