I talk a lot about technology making it easier to compete on data and discuss how the world of real estate is changing. Today it hit home again how important the local piece is to the whole equation for clients that are sort of national but only really care about their “location.” Being able to…
NYC Taxi Paradox
I’m in NYC often enough to have experienced a broad selection of taxi drivers. As you’re driving around you’re passing everyone on the road, swerving in and out of traffic, honking at people that don’t turn fast enough. Some of those you are passing are other cabs. There’s always the traffic jam that has taxi…
Sure, let’s call it a modified Pareto Principle
20% of tasks take up about 80% of your time. There are some things that give you more bang for your buck. Put in a dollar and you’ll get back two. Similarly, there are tasks that you can spend too much time on. Put in a dollar and get back a quarter. You aren’t going…
The value of real estate data.
There is no organization dedicated to making high quality, accurate and timely commercial real estate data available to the greater industry or outside organizations. The closest we have is CoStar who has no real competition and their model is not setup to incentivize their sources of information to get them the best information. It’s a…
Not thinking about the obvious.
Real estate is one of those things that for many companies “just happens.” When they need to expand a business line they don’t necessarily think about real estate specifically – they will often focus on the business side. If they have a well informed and involved real estate team, this usually works effectively and they…
Focusing on the wrong metrics
Business is all about incentives. Getting people to buy your product is about providing them a value that exceeds the cost. Motivating a sales team may involve tying some revenue incentive to sales successes. Driving improvement is about understanding where things aren’t quite right. The issue is making sure the incentives align with what you…
42Floors….need I say more?
42Floors….need I say more? This story on how it came to be will be familiar to those of us in the business.
Appropriate responses and wasted energy.
The busier you are the more difficult it is to provide detailed and in-depth communications on your thoughts. Not having time makes it difficult to communicate completely clearly. By default you must now open yourself up for interpretation and miscommunication. This means your going to get responses back that you don’t expect – both in…
Real estate sophistication
The classic view of real estate is the connecting of a client who has a real estate need with available space that meets their needs. To do this, clients and landlords rely upon brokers bring the two sides together. It works well because brokers are the independent parties that know their markets extremely well and…
When the going gets tough – call for the horses.
Every leader has their team of people they know that they can call on when things hit the fan. Companies know which vendors get things done no matter the circumstances. Friends have those one or two people on speed dial that they can reach out to when times are the worst. When the going gets…