Expect Video Content Creation Platforms for CRE Brokers

Rob Nielsen, Executive Vice President - Corporate Real Estate Brokerage, Jones Lang LaSalle Brokerage, Inc.

“Why should I hire you?” This is the core question asked of commercial real estate sales brokers.

Brokers aim to find ways to differentiate themselves from the competition so that they can win more business. They benefit from a more robust set of tools and one area ripe for proptech investment is independent platforms for video-recorded property and self-marketing generated content or, put another way, platforms that showcase commercial real estate brokers as content creators.

Intangibles are often the distinguishing features potential sellers consider in their selection criteria of commercial real estate brokers: Does the prospective seller like respect, and trust the broker enough to believe they will secure the best deal? However, sophisticated sellers want to see proof of success. That proof can take the shape of many forms including market expertise, experience, and marketing collateral.

The established platforms for marketing collateral are the commercial multiple listing services.

For the past 20 years, commercial real estate brokers who are selling properties under $20 million, have been consistent in the way they advertise: they create and post a flier of the property on commercial multiple listing services with photos, floor plans, and high-level demographic data; they develop offering memorandums with more detailed information including tenant and lease expiration information; and they distribute their listing teasers or summary info primarily to curated email lists of potential buyers, which can often exceed 10,000 recipients.

“Commercial Real Estate Brokers Must Embrace The Power Of Video Content Creation Platforms To Showcase Their Properties And Enhance Their Personal Brand In A Crowded Marketplace”

Over the past five years, there has been a platform shift that is not being capitalized on in the CRE brokerage space. That shift is towards personal branding via video. Residential brokers are, as usual, the trailblazer and there are numerous articles in the Wall Street Journal, CNN digital, and elsewhere describing how residential brokers are uploading videos on Instagram and TikTok to advertise and successfully sell their listings.

Commercial Brokers require more formal and exclusive platforms than mass social media sites and we will see those showcase sites start to develop over the next couple of years. What we can expect to see is a platform for commercial real estate brokers to self-upload personalized videos and voice-overs to advertise not only their specific property listings but also to directly enhance the personal brand of the broker themselves. Sellers of commercial property will see this video marketing effort as an enhancement to the current flyers and 3D photography tours.

The more prominent commercial multiple listing services platforms, specifically the behemoth CoStar and the newer CREXi both have options to upload video, but these marketplaces provide a robust breadth of information on properties; what is under-developed is the content-creator approach that forms the bedrock of social media. Commercial real estate brokers will quickly shift to being content creators to help distinguish themselves from a crowded marketplace. Proptech funders should be on the lookout to start seeding these companies that are helping the commercial real estate market out of web 1.0 to web 2.0 and 3.0.