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> Sun-Sentinel Business, August 13, 2001
Real
estate firm says technology is 'great equalizer'
Ken Morris doesn't fancy himself a
techie. But then again, as he concedes, he has few alternatives.
"I don't have a choice,"
said the head of a commercial brokerage services company,
Morris Southeast Group in Plantation. "Without technology,
I'm dead in the water."
Like so many other commercial real
estate brokerages, Morris' company offers companies a slew
of services, from helping clients find a location to negotiating
prices on leases to helping managers remodel existing buildings.
Unfortunately, so do many of the larger
competitors in the commercial real estate business, and
these rivals have platoons of analysts and brokers and engineers
on their roster.
So how does Morris's local firm keep
pace? By deftly using available software to his advantage,
Morris said.
For the past two years, Morris has
used an Internet-accessed package that gives him specific
information on buildings, neighborhoods, vacancy rates --
you name it.
The program used by Morris is one
of several types of real estate information packages produced
by CoStar Group Inc. in Bethesda, Md. The company arranges
the data by geographic regions. The price for the service
and data runs into the thousands of dollars per month.
To keep information fresh, Morris
downloads new data from the Web site as many as two or three
times a week. The package, Morris says, helps him in two
ways: It gives him access to research that the larger rivals
have and allows him to save time.
All he has to do, Morris says, is
to show up at a prospective client's office with his laptop
and screen projector to produce a virtual tour of the city.
A broker looking for 3,000 square feet of warehouse space,
for example, doesn't need to drive all over town to find
an available rental. The program would also tell you what
the location costs and any pertinent zoning restrictions.
"My job is to help clients save
time and money," he said. "With this system I
can show [a client] an entire market right from the comfort
of his own office."
Ditto for a South Florida client who
may be looking for space in a city in another state. Now
Morris doesn't need to send out a broker on a fishing expedition
for data in California or Texas.
Most of all, however, Morris said,
it's technology that allows him to resist offers to merge
and to stay independent in a company started by his father
nearly a half a century ago.
"I've decided to stick it out
and what allows me to do it is technology. Technology is
the great equalizer."
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