There is a glaring hole in the industry – bad, inaccurate and cumbersome market information.
Residential real estate leads CRE in data availability largely because the end customer has a vested interest in getting and using the data themselves. Blame a strong for sale by owner market.
In CRE the end user rarely needs the market data for their own needs so there hasn’t been the need for outside developers and innovators to enter the market and build out that same missing piece. Some will now point to CoStar/LoopNet but I would argue that it’s not anywhere near the robustness or accurateness of MLS systems in residential. The historical missing piece has been that brokers and brokerages are therefore incentivized to look up their data and use it as a differentiator for sales.
So what is the market need to build a good end user facing CRE data platform? End users in CRE need to know where they SHOULD be regardless of where they are currently. It’s a hard question, but the first to build it will be the fist mover in more than one area.