MacKenzie Commercial’s Datastory Consulting LLC is making a foray into creating commercial real estate software designed to help guide brokers in making big real estate plays.
Commercial real estate in many ways remains a low-tech industry. Emailing electronic versions of paper marketing fliers is as high-tech as it gets for some brokers. But for Datastory’s Matt Felton, the availability of big databases tracking everything from coffee shop preferences to U.S. Census numbers is creating new ways to slice and dice markets and make much more informed decisions.
“We live in this world of big data, but it’s high velocity, high variety, and it’s hard to make sense of it,” said Felton, president of Datastory. “We’re not building an app that has a magic ‘lease here’ button. We’re building an app that helps a broker get to that issue of human behavior quicker.”
The information that Datastory is pulling into its suite of apps includes large, powerful databases compiled by companies such as Esri, which combines location mapping with consumer-spending data, among other services. Having that data and using it at what Felton calls the “hyperlocal” level can help industry professionals like retail brokers identify underserved markets as they help clients search for new locations.
“If we have a list of addresses of people, we put that on a map and we can actually quantify it and say, ‘30 percent of them are probably latte drinkers,’” Felton said. “Those people, when you know who they are and how they live, you can market to them better.”
The apps Datastory is creating also will allow real estate firms to plug in their own data. For instance, if a broker is working with a health care provider to find a location close to its patients, it can plug in a database of addresses that will show on a map the areas closest to the provider’s patient base.
Because the apps also contain data on traffic, building vacancies, demographics and even zoning information, they will allow brokers to answer questions from clients on-the-spot. Before, Felton said, brokers would have to take down a list of questions and return with the answers after performing extensive research.
“We built an app around the idea that it’s so simple, even this low-tech real estate guy who doesn’t care about the technology can say, ‘I just need to know these five things,’” and can pull the information from the app quickly and easily, Felton said.
Datastory is also breaking up the different functions it provides to clients into separate apps depending on a firm’s needs. There is a lease-management tool that collects information about portfolios; an app that allows brokers to create interactive map tours of their listings; an app that is aimed at researching market information; and apps that allow brokers to send clients interactive maps. The trick is in keeping the apps simple but highly functional.
Felton said the challenge so far has been to design the apps to perform functions he hasn’t thought were needed yet.
It’s not clear how much the apps will cost, but Felton said Datastory will likely offer the software on a subscription basis, much like how CoStar Group Inc. offers its web-based market research platform. The software is set for launch in the first quarter of 2015.
He expects Datastory will serve both large and small firms with its software, but it should be particularly helpful for smaller firms.
“What we’ve found is that we’re able to help the Davids compete with Goliath,” Felton said. “We are able to help the little guys that don’t want to spend a lot of time building a research team, and our team can be part of that outsourced research team. We fill that gap for people.”