What Goes Into Listing Commercial Properties

Posting to commercial real estate listing platforms is often an important part of your overall marketing plan for a commercial property. These platforms reach thousands of potential buyers and tenants. Where and how you post can make a big difference in your transaction.

The answer isn’t necessarily to post every property to every platform. There are other considerations and strategies to best serve your clients using listing platforms. Here’s what three experts have to say.

What are the major platforms?

The major platforms for commercial real estate include CoStar, Catylist, LoopNet, and Crexi.

CoStar boasts up to a million lease and sale listings on its site. Catylist runs on the Moody’s Analytics commercial real estate database.

LoopNet is marketed as the world’s largest commercial real estate marketing platform. Crexi, short for the Commercial Real Estate Exchange, Inc., offers free listings for a variety of commercial real estate property types.

Other smaller platforms include Brevitas, CommercialSearch, PropertyShark, SharpLaunch, and TotalCommercial. There are also platforms provided by local REALTOR® associations and MLSs.

What about MLSs?

Most commercial real estate agents and brokers do not join MLSs and would not put their commercial listings on MLSs. However, in mid-sized and smaller markets, some professionals find that it’s the best way to reach their target audience, says David Schnitzer of Ascend Commercial Real Estate.

Jennifer Gray with TIG Real Estate Services says she has joined MLSs to facilitate commercial deals. It is part of her larger marketing strategy to find the right tenant or buyer for the property. She also advocates commercial practitioners joining local REALTOR® associations, building relationships with residential agents and brokers, and visiting chambers of commerce to cast a wide net.

Who pays for listings?

It depends, says Bill Cox of Carey Cox Company. Some brokerages pass on listing costs to clients at closing or lease execution, or agree to split the marketing costs. Other brokerages will pass the costs on to their agents as part of their desk fees. Who pays may be negotiable.

In Schnitzer’s experience, brokerages often pay for CoStar subscriptions, while individuals usually pay for Crexi subscriptions.

How do you maximize your listing?

The first step for marketing your client’s property is to figure out who your target audience is—what type of tenant or buyer you are looking for. Once you determine your audience, you need to attract that audience.

High-quality, comprehensive property photos are key to any commercial listing. It has become much more sophisticated in recent years, Schnitzer notes. “It’s gone from someone on the street with a camera to using a smartphone—then came video, then 3D videos from companies like RICOH360 and Matterport,” he says. “Drone photography has been great and become really enhanced in the last year or so with overlays and animations.”

Listings typically include a property description, the physical features, information about parking and traffic counts, rates of return, and relevant regional data, Cox says.

Leave nothing blank, advises Gray. Include useful information such as site plans, area maps, demographic information, and a marketing flyer, she says.

What’s your listing strategy?

“When you have a listing, you want it to be exposed to as many prospective buyers or tenants as possible,” Cox says. The major national platforms are a logical first step toward that goal, Gray adds.

Schnitzer says his brokerage’s philosophy is to post listings to as many platforms as makes sense for that property. That often includes the major platforms and some smaller ones.

Gray recommends listing properties everywhere. One reason she subscribes to national portals is to see commercial listings that do not appear on other platforms.

“A lot of brokers don’t want to subscribe to certain portals because they don’t want to get phone calls from the public,” she says. Those brokers would prefer to work with other commercial brokers or tenant representatives, but she believes they are missing out on business opportunities.

LoopNet offers several tiers of subscriptions. Gray’s brokerage pays so she can offer her clients free access to the Silver tier, a step above the Basic level. By selecting the upgrade, her clients’ listings are better positioned in search results on LoopNet and CoStar. She feels she is not doing her clients a service unless she puts their listings on at the Silver level.

Although LoopNet is owned by CoStar, LoopNet only lists a percentage of the listings shown on CoStar, she explains. By connecting the public with commercial listings, LoopNet helps Gray find prospects she wouldn’t otherwise find or have access to. LoopNet inquiries are primarily from business owners and investors who aren’t represented by an agent—a target market in Gray’s overall marketing plan.

Depending on the property you are marketing, it may make sense to use smaller or more local platforms if that is where your target audience is looking, Cox says.

Many large brokerages may also have their own internal networks for commercial real estate listings, Schnitzer says. That’s another avenue for marketing. “The business has changed,” he says. “Commercial properties used to be sold through face-to-face interactions, marketing flyers, iand trade shows. We still do those things, but most initial searches are online now. You have to have a presence online. The best way to get all of your clients’ info out there is to use these property aggregators. It’s the best value for the dollar and the best exposure for ther properties.”