It can be difficult to know exactly what information to include in your available listing, but we thought we would share some tips. Our customer service team spoke to nearly 1,000 small businesses in October who were searching for space and we thought we would provide some real time feedback for the best way to market available space to these businesses. Below are some tips:

·      Price: Absolutely, 100%, every time, price your listing every where on line. The small business understands that if they ask for improvements, the price might increase. If you want to get qualified inquiries and more inquiries, price your listing. The theory that you might get a business to tour by un-pricing a listing and then they will fall in love with the space regardless of the price does not work!

·      Square Footage: List each square footage that you have vacant separately so businesses with specific needs can find your available space. If you have a space that is 3,000 square feet but is divisible, list each square footage that it is divisible to.

·      Pictures: Interior and Exterior and the more the merrier.

·      Floor plans: For both office and industrial users, a floor plan is requested very frequently. If you don’t have a floor plan, describe the layout in the description

·      Description: In the description, discuss the positives of the space and the location. Discuss nearby amenities and companies in your building. Call out specific business types that would be a good fit for the space or who have leased the space in the past. If the building is a great fit for therapists of a gym, add that to the description.

·      Video: There aren’t that common yet in commercial real estate, but more and more businesses are viewing videos already on Rofo.com. It saves everyone time and makes a space stand out. If the space is run down, show it describe the improvements that you would be willing to do. If the space looks great, show it off and help it lease quicker.

·      Reviews: Have your tenants review what its like to be a tenant in your building. Small businesses like to hear from other small businesses and this advice has been consistently asked for by our audience.

Map view and radius search are two great search features on Rofo. Occasionally, listing view doesn’t provide quite enough information, especially if you are not familiar with a location. This is where the map view search function can help. It allows you to target your search geographically and see a more dynamic representation of office space search results.

If you want a more focused commercial listing search, use the Rofo Radius Search tool. This allows you to display only the listings within a certain distance from an address. Want your office to be near a certain highway, public transportation or other amenity? Then search for an address near it and Rofo Radius Search will display listings within your specified distance.

To use the map view, just click on the “Map View” tab at the top of any search results page. This will take you to a map of that city and the icons represent all the buildings with listings. The Radius Search Tool is located in the left sidebar search tool. Just click on the Radius search tab at the top of the window and type in the address in an area you want to locate your office. Then those commercial spaces will be displayed in the search results for you to review.

We’ll be introducing some great new features and an even simpler design in the coming weeks. The number of entrepreneurs and small businesses using Rofo to search for office space continues to grow. We’re listening to your feedback and incorporating into the site.

At Rofo we’re solely focused on the market for office space. We recently discovered a residential site that seems to be a one stop shop for Real Estate Listings And Homes For Sale.

According to their site…”we can maintain an impartial view on your local real estate market, your neighborhood or your home. Instead of listing only certain properties or providing an incomplete view of the market, our technology integrates directly with your local MLS (multiple listing service) to ensure that a search at NeighborCity.com brings you literally every listing available on the market (that is listed with a broker/real estate agent).”

All sounds very good to us.

RealUp offers a great features to real estate professional including free sales comparables, free listing search and free lending quotes. The site’s recent sales data is particularly valuable in today’s volatile market. Partnering with a top real estate data allows RealUp to update sales comps continuously and provide accurate comparables. They offer all these services for free to users and utilize a unique PPC business model.

Google Trends is a tool that tracks how much people are searching for certain terms on Google.  Here are a few  interesting graphs created with Google trends related to commercial real estate search.  The first graph is the average search volume in the USA for the term “Office Space” since 2004.

Analysis: The graph represents the search volume index for the term “office space” since 2004.  The search volume index is the average number times “office space” was typed into Google search since 2004 and is set at 1.0.  The letters on the graph are news articles that Google thought were related to “office space“.   Today the search volume index is about .65 meaning the average number of times people type “office space” into Google search is 65% of the average since 2004.  The official start of the recession was in December, 2007, and since then the graph shows a 35% drop from the average search volume as the demand for office space declines along with the overall economy.

The next graph shows the search volume index in the USA for the term “commercial real estate” since 2004.

Analysis: The number of searches in the USA for the term “commercial real estate” shows an even more disturbing trend, decreasing around 50% from the overall average since 2004.

Google Trends also allows you to compare search terms.  In the next graph the search volume for the terms “San Francisco Office”,”Los Angeles Office” and “Sacramento Office” are compared.

Analysis: The comparison is ranked in relation to the average search volume for “Sacramento office”, which is set as 1.0.  This shows that on average people search for “San Francisco office” and “Los Angeles office” about 2 and 2.7 times more, respectively, than “Sacramento office”.  The graph also shows that in 2009 both Los Angeles and San Francisco search volumes are experiencing a slight rebound that seems to be correlated with the recent positive economic sentiment.  However, the Sacramento office market remains pretty stagnant.  Check out Rofo listings in each of these markets: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento.

I wouldn’t recommend completely relying on the accuracy of Google trends since there are many variables, but it does give an interesting glimpse into the Google search relationship to current market conditions.  Try it for yourself: Google Trends

We have some great things in store for our business users who are contemplating a new home for their business.  We’ll be rolling out videos to help you better understand the markets you’re considering.  The best part is that these vids are coming to you from the experts themselves.  We’d like to thank Trent with Colliers in Oakland who contributed this guided tour of the Oakland, CA office space market.

I’ll be participating in a discussion this week about Technology and the impact on Commercial Real Estate.  The event is being sponsored by the folks at First American Title Company www.ncs.firstam.com/norcal as part of the San Francisco Investment Forum.  This is obviously a very broad topic but in our market niche we’re seeing how user generated content and social interaction on Rofo are enabling businesses, brokers and landlords make relevant and timely connections.

The event starts at 11:30am on September 10 at Embarcadero 4, San Francisco.