Realestate online information systems

Abstract

Several commercial real-estate sites provide listings of available commercial property on the Internet. These listings are generated on the basis of selection criteria as floor area, price and location. Despite the obvious utility of the listings and their promise for the transaction process and market transparency, one third of commercial realestate listing sites went bankrupt in 2001 and 2002. To provide an explanation for the failure, 63 commercial real-estate sites were analysed and classified into three basic business models: the Research / Information model, the Marketing model and the Transaction model. A common success factor for all models is the functionality of the site, especially interaction between the user and the available information. The paper proposes that the transfer of existing architectural representations, information-processing instruments and decision-taking tools is an essential component of future development towards integrated services that accompany a building throughout its lifecycle. This transfer amounts to (1) the addition of building and contextual information from standard documentation and online information services, (2) the derivation and coherent description of programmatic requirements database, and (3) advanced user interaction with building information.