Boston-based Paradigm Properties has an extensive menu of connections and information on the MrOfficeSpace.com Web site, such as leasing details for its 99 Summer St. building in downtown Boston.
After creeping along the information superhighway the past two years, MrOfficeSpace.com is shifting into high gear – and one of the main destinations for the commercial real estate information Web site is none other than the Hub itself.
Yale and Henry Robbins, longtime publishers of a series of East Coast office building books, will be in Boston this week to promote MrOfficeSpace.com to area landlords and real estate brokers. Launched in New York City in 2000, the service is now listing more than 58 million square feet of office space in the Bay State, primarily in Boston and Cambridge. Along with color photos and maps of a given property, the data includes a building’s ownership, listing agent and existing tenants. Browsers can also find what space is available and on what floors, the asking rent and whether it is being offered directly or as sublease.
Executive Vice President Henry Robbins explained last week that Yale Robbins Inc. is taking a different approach from the CoStar Group, which he acknowledges is “the 500-pound gorilla” in third-party office data. Whereas Maryland-based CoStar is primarily a subscription service, browsers can obtain information for free on MrOfficeSpace.com. The site’s profit instead is to be reaped from landlords who add to the basic building information with enhancements such as virtual building tours, floor plans and Web links to the ownership and its entire portfolio.
“This is really a different model” than CoStar, said Henry Robbins. “I see us as an additional tool in the toolbox.”
Indeed, he said, Yale Robbins Inc. has no designs on dominating the national scene as CoStar does at present. Mimicking the geographic breadth of the company’s widely read print products, MrOfficeSpace.com will be focused on the corridor between Boston and Philadelphia, extending outward only as far as Cleveland. The key, Henry Robbins said, is to ensure that the information on the office market is accurate and timely in the regions on which the product is focused.
“Yale and I are not convinced that you have to have a national database,” he said. “The quality of your data has to be very good locally, and as long as the local players know they can depend on it, they are going to use it.”
MrOfficeSpace.com is concentrates on buildings with 50,000 square feet or more, an inventory which Henry Robbins said represents a substantial share of the office market. Already encompassing 800 million square feet and 4,000 buildings nine states, Yale Robbins hopes to roll out MrOfficeSpace.com in Boston, Philadelphia and Cleveland by year’s end.
In launching the site, the company has been careful to ensure that the software is user-friendly and accessible for all types of Web systems, such as dialup modems. Speed was also a key concern, and Henry Robbins said he believes MrOfficeSpace.com is among the fastest such systems available. “Our industry doesn’t have a lot of patience,” he said. “Brokers are always doing two things at once.”
Henry Robbins acknowledged that the Internet is littered with the expensive carcasses of former commercial real estate search models, but said he believes Yale Robbins Inc. has taken the right approach by carefully developing its software and slowly bringing its capabilities into each market to ensure they can handle the information. A full-time research staff is constantly reviewing the information, with a goal to update each property a minimum of every 30 days.
As it increases its presence locally, MrOfficeSpace.com will be expanded into the suburban market, although Henry Robbins added he believes Boston and Cambridge are already well represented on the Web site.
Besides already being cash-flow positive, Henry Robbins said his company is confident in MrOfficeSpace.com’s prospects because they are not trying to learn a new industry. Its Office Buildings magazines have covered the East Coast for more than a quarter-century, providing the firm with an understanding of the market, as well as familiarity with leading commercial real estate professionals. “We already know how real estate people operate,” he said. “We understand the nature of the beast.”
Other Angles
Even though it is just now appearing in Boston, MrOfficeSpace.com has established links with such regional firms as Hobbs Brook Management, Everest Partners and Paradigm Properties. Boston-based Paradigm has an extensive menu of connections and additional information on the Web site, such as leasing details for its 99 Summer St. building in downtown Boston, and other properties throughout the area. Clicking a link on the 99 Summer St. page on MrOfficeSpace.com connects the user to Paradigm’s own Web site, on which the “available space” section is also powered by Yale Robbins’ software.
Such private-label marketing is a key component of the company’s strategy, in which Yale Robbins Inc. customizes the information to the look and feel of a private user. Hobbs Brook Management is one of several firms that use the Yale Robbins Inc. software on its own Web site, allowing continual updating of the “available space” section. Henry Robbins said his firm believes that is a promising angle of its business, appealing not only to private companies but also economic development agencies as well, with several such groups already using the software on their sites. Communities and development agencies in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey have already teamed up with MrOfficeSpace.com to provide information on available commercial space.
In designing the “available space” section for Paradigm, it was important that the Yale Robbins software reflected the look and feel of the real estate firm’s tenant-oriented mission, said Paradigm’s director of client services, Anne Fazio, adding she believes that goal was accomplished. “It has worked incredibly well,” she said.
Fazio said MrOfficeSpace.com has resolved Paradigm’s dilemma of keeping property data current on the Web site. “In a tough market, it’s very important to make sure information is relevant and up to date, and this has made it really easy for us,” she said. “It has been a pretty seamless process.”
Efforts to contact Hobbs Brook officials were unsuccessful. Some local research professionals contacted said they were unfamiliar with MrOfficeSpace.com, but Richards Barry Joyce & Partners Director of Research Katie Kelly did a quick tour of the site and said she believes it could prove useful, albeit more as a marketing vehicle than to do market research.
“It looks like a good search program,” Kelly said, acknowledging the site’s responsiveness. A former researcher for CoStar, Kelly said RBJ&P does rely heavily on that system to understand the market, but said it is too early to determine what impact MrOfficeSpace.com may have in that regard. While reiterating that his company is not looking to take on CoStar, Henry Robbins said he believes real estate professionals will come to find MrOfficeSpace a worthy program to include as a data source. “We are complementary to what they do,” he said of CoStar. “We’re another product in the market, and I think that is healthy.”
