Commercial real estate information provider LoopNet Inc. is offering access to detailed property information and closed sales as stand-alone products: "Property Facts" and "Property Comps."
Property Facts offers detailed information on more than 10 million commercial properties, providing owner, lender, tenant, market stats, and tax information for both on-market and off-market properties.
Property Comps provides sale price, buyer, seller, sale date and other transaction details for more than 1.3 million closed sale transactions.
Both products are offered separately on a subscription basis, which LoopNet said should appeal to brokers and brokerage firms, individual investors, landlords, appraisers and financial services professionals who have been priced out of the market for these information services.
LoopNet will continue to offer clients subscriptions to the LoopNet marketplace, which features nearly 800,000 listings that are actively marketed for sale and lease.
San Francisco-based LoopNet said Property Facts has been operating in beta mode on LoopNet.com for more than a year under the name Property Research Database.
The launch of the stand-alone product provides improved search, analytic, and reporting features and functionality, the company said.
In its most recent annual report to investors, LoopNet said the Property Research Database "has been, and will likely continue to be" a significant area of investment for the company.
The database aggregates information from the LoopNet marketplace, LoopNet research, independent data providers, public records, and LoopNet members, the company said.
LoopNet counts the National Association of Realtors, local Realtor boards, and NAR subsidiary ePropertyData among its competitors.
Acquired by NAR in 2008, ePropertyData operates CommercialSource.com, which receives commercial listings from sources including California Real Estate Technology Services (CARETS), the Seattle-based Commercial Brokers Association, the Houston Association of Realtors, the Dayton Area Board of Realtors, and the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Association of Realtors.
NAR subsidiary Realtors Property Resource, a parcel-based database that will be available at no charge to all Realtors, is licensing commercial property listings data from cooperating multiple listing services and Realtor Controlled Commercial Information Exchanges (CIEs), and is also developing tools for commercial applications.
LoopNet, which employed 300 workers at the end of the year, posted a $15.4 million profit in 2010, up 34 percent from 2009, as revenue grew by 2 percent, to $78 million.
At the end of the year, the company said it had more than 4.6 million registered members, of which 68,608 were premium members. Monthly unique visitors to LoopNet.com grew from 985,000 during 2009 to 1.5 million last year, the company said, making it the leading online marketplace for commercial real estate.
In three separate deals in 2010, LoopNet acquired BizQuest, Reaction Web and LandsofAmerica for a total of $22.1 million plus potential gross earn-out payments of up to $4.3 million.
LoopNet said it also benefited from two nonrecurring additions to its bottom line in 2010: a $5.4 million tax adjustment in the company’s favor and $1.9 million in reimbursements from an insurer related to 2009 litigation expenses.
LoopNet was sued for copyright infringement by CoStar Realty Information Inc. over photographs LoopNet members posted on the company’s website. The lawsuit was settled in December 2009.
The company is also a defendant in a patent infringement suit brought by Real Estate Alliance Ltd. (REAL) against numerous real estate-related companies in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
