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The Commercial Committee agenda centered around discussion of the Commercial Real Estate ALERT report trends, released earlier this year. The agenda was driven by Chair Tray Bates, CCIM, CIPS, SIOR, who felt strongly engaging members and their expertise in a working discussion would be a valuable use of their volunteer time.
Vice Chair Beth Cristina, ALC, along with Jean Maday, NAR Director of Commercial Development and Services, led attendees in a set of interactive table groups divided by the eight topics featured in the report. Maday directed each table to hash out ideas for actions at the brokerage level and to explore how NAR provides support for each issue. “Capital Markets,” “Demographics,” “Transportation,” “Crowdfunding,” and “Technology,” were among the trends discussed.
After nearly an hour of conversations, a representative from each group reported findings to the room. Especially notable was the Technology topic, where Jeff Jones of Parsippany, N.J., praised the discussion format before explaining that his group needed to “become a little more demanding” of the data ecosystem in the commercial space. He urged a stronger leadership position from NAR in the future, seeking a “common [listings] data format we can all rely on and not pay a fortune for.”
The crowdfunding table cited growth of the crowdfunding market, starting at $800 million placed in 2010 compared to $34.4 billion in 2017. Concerns related to risk rose to the top of the discussion. “How accredited are the individuals running the funds?” A distinction was noted that the JOBS Act, signed into law in 2012, did the work of separating accredited from non-accredited investors, yet was silent on accreditation of offerings. Support from national organizations was suggested: “Is this an avenue for NAR or CCIM education? Could this be the next [education track]?”
Next steps will be to forward the suggestions and ideas to the 2018 Commercial Committee to take up in continued discussions and put forth recommendations to the commercial membership at large. Committee members also heard from Emily Line, RPR®'s VP of Commercial Services, who outlined themes RPR® enables for its users – creativity, collaboration, innovation, and making data easy to consume and applicable to client business. She mentioned the recent addition of a 7.5 million commercial tenant data set, adding a new dimension to RPR® by providing users working the commercial leasing side in certain markets with a greater set of tools.
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