The other day I came across a fascinating 3-part series of papers from 2001 on the Working Papers page of the Zell-Lurie Center for Real Estate website: The Impact of New Information Technologies on the Commercial Brokerage Industry, by Joseph Gyourko and Asuka Nakahara (papers #376-378). The research was sponsored by SIOR (Society of Industrial and Office Realtors).
Part I of the research sizes the annual commissions for the U.S. office and industrial brokerage market at around $12 billion, ~75% of which belongs to leasing (as opposed to investment sales). In Part II of the research, the authors step through the 25 most likely candidates, many of which were startups, to impact the leasing and investment sales brokerage functions. The paper was published in February 2001, about a year after the NASDAQ peaked, so it’s an interesting time capsule in that regard.
- NASDAQ Index, 1971 to June 2013
Many of the companies reviewed no longer exist at their year 2001 URLs, either due to acquisition or due to having gone out of business. Some are still running at their 2001 URLs, and a few have even preserved their year 2001 user interfaces! Here are the companies:
- “eReal-Estate Transaction and Listing Sites” as of Feb. 2001. Source: The Impact of New Information Technologies on the Commercial Brokerage Industry Phase II: E-Business Initiatives in the Commercial Brokerage and Listing Space Report for the Society of Office and Industrial REALTORS® Educational Foundation February 21, 2001, by Joseph Gyourko and Asuka Nakahara
I will write on Part III of their research separately.
