Commercial Investment Real Estate is the magazine of the CCIM Institute, the leading provider of commercial real estate education. CIRE covers market trends, current developments, and business strategies within the commercial real estate field.
Issue link: http://cire.epubxp.com/i/143044
TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS i Site Selection by Joel Kahn, CCIM, Ben Wilson, and Hayden Pittman In commercial real estate, each project is different from the last. Properties, personalities, financing terms, market conditions, and other factors continue to change and can make the life of a commercial real estate professional uncertain to say the least. One of the best ways to combat the uncertainty is by measuring tangible characteristics of the real estate and its surroundings. STDB is built to help CCIM members make better decisions by using location technology. For example, an STDB user can better understand a neighborhood's demographics to determine the likely success or failure of a new restaurant concept, planned development, or storage facility. Users can even gather a list of all of the tenants in an ofce building. STDB provides information such as demographics, retail market potential, tapestry segmentation, consumer spending, business list data, thematic mapping, food source maps, Pictometry oblique imagery, USGS Topographic Maps, trafc counts, satellite imagery, map presentations, and comparison reports. 20 July | August | 2013 STDB tools are used by professionals in all disciplines of commercial real estate, including developers, brokers, investors, appraisers, landlords, tenant reps, leasing agents, retailers, lenders, site analysts, business consultants, and economic development planners. Tey use STDB to display unique real estate characteristics about an area or property, compare potential or existing locations, prospect, analyze, and understand market trends. Users may also create map annotations to illustrate an area, assess crime risk, analyze retail market potential, or even map competitor locations. Simple processes that yield quality data greatly enhance the way professionals provide valuable information to their clients and prospects during their decision-making process. But even CCIM members who use STDB regularly may not be aware of these tools' full capabilities. Tat's why CCIM Technologies provides a variety of education and technical support. Webinars Te CCIMTech team conducts a series of webinars designed to help STDB users better understand the capabilities of the site as well as provide overviews of partner products on an ongoing basis. Recent webinars covered topics such as creating business lists and using thematic mapping in STDB. Webinar attendees learned about the multiple applications of each tool, how to create visual representations maps, and how to understand the data methodology. Te free webinars generally last 30 to 60 minutes. CCIM members can view upcoming and archived webinars at www.stdblearningcenter.com. As there will be signifcant changes to STDB coming soon, future webinars will cover the new enhancements, features, and data. Past webinar topics that apply to the new platform will also be ofered. Other Resources Along with webinars, CCIMTech educates its users with training videos, tutorials, sam- Commercial Investment Real Estate