The Commercial Real Estate Show opines on which websites one should use to sell commercial real estate. Listening to it, I’m not sure what his answer is, so I’ll opine.
First, there is the question of how publicly to offer a property to begin with. At one extreme a property is offered privately, with disclosures related to the property subject to signing of an NDA. At the other extreme is a publicly listed property. In this post I’ll concentrate on the latter.
For most commercial properties, certainly those in the $2 million to $5 million mid-market in which we are active, it is clear to us, from experience, that being listed in what we consider to be the 3 primary platforms is important. One of these is MLS, which many commercial brokers avoid. Anecdotally, we find that MLS is at least as significant of a driver of leads to purchase mid-market commercial property. Thus, we believe placing a property on MLS provides value for customers that have listed with us. We do note, however, that as the price rises, the usefulness of an MLS listing seems to wane, particularly for properties over $10 million.