will be taking that high-finance sensibility (Hancock has a background on Wall Street) to the commercial real estate market.
It comes down to creating something like what those on the Street—analysts, traders, and brokers—call a “view,” developed by gathering and studying as much information and data as possible. A broker might use an analytical tool that measures data on yearly performance of a specific stock she invests in, comparing it with many other factors, to see that the growth of the stock is slowing. That gives her that “view”—in this case, a negative one—so she cuts it from her portfolio of investments.
RealMassive’s tool is similar. It is designed to be able to analyze tons of data points, such as the rent of a specific office three months ago, six months ago, nine months ago, and its rate of change. That analysis can provide a broker or a renter or investor, who is searching for a particular type of office space with RealMassive, a view on whether it’s a good fit. Users could find what Hancock calls “inflection points” when the user combines the information about rent costs with other data, such as the office’s location and the overall availability and demand for such office space, as well as countless other factors.
That could help, say, an asset manager discover that industrial buildings are particularly cheap for the square footage, or that commercial real estate in Atlanta has a better value than Miami, Hancock says.
“Calculated, statistical data is going to help them make better data-driven decisions on whether to hold onto certain properties in certain markets, when to enter or exit a market,” he says. “Those types of decisions are really ripe for more data to be injected.”
RealMassive isn’t the only Austin company that sees gold in using data in the commercial real estate market. IdealSpot is trying to use local market data as well as consumer spending habits to help businesses determine whether a retail location might be a good fit, as the Austin Business Journal reported last month.
McClure says RealMassive’s trove of information on commercial real estate markets nationally, built into the data dashboard service, will give the company a first-mover advantage in the market.
“If you don’t have that dashboard, you’re at a competitive disadvantage,” McClure says about his analytics tool. “We’re going to make it possible for anyone who is technologically savvy to drive decisions with data.”
