OpenComps Blog
We got busy with new features over the past few months, as you can see from our stream of updates here and here and here, that we got really delayed on our first quarter review. Well, there were no earth-shattering news: the market’s good times continue unabated. Which is nice, isn’t it? We certainly like it. Let’s take a look at the activity in the four sectors we cover.
Among the many new features we have been quietly launching in the past month, we really hope you embrace this one: tagging yourself in transactions!
At OpenComps, we are very keen to give credit where credit is due in putting these transactions together. It’s not easy, and we know it. That’s why from the beginning we tracked the Owner’s and Buyer’s Brokers and tried to highlight their ranking for the current year and prior. But those were the firms that were being tracked and highlighted. Now, we want to take the credit assignment to the real source: the people… to you!
As you know, we keep tabs on many public companies through news reports and, more importantly, their SEC filings. Some companies take the word “public” seriously and we really appreciate it. And some companies – while having no problems raising money publicly – have very distorted understanding of what it means to be public. Example #1: Equity Residential (NYSE: EQR).
Happy Cinco de Mayo! And Happy 8th anniversary to OpenComps! On May 5, 2006, OpenComps officially launched after over a year of development. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 8 years since then.
Of course, our first 6.5 years were mostly spent in sort of prototype state and real work on the service started in earnest only 1.5 years ago, but that heavily discounts the countless hours we put in maintaining a good data (especially in the hotel sector), maintaining 99.9% uptime and keeping the bugs away for those first 6.5 years.
We are very excited of the progress we have made over the past 1+ year and we really appreciate the support we have received from all of our users. Special thanks to all of our PRO subscribers who keep the lights on and ensure that the next 8 years will be even more epic than the first. We hope you join us for the journey!
Happy May 1st! With spring firmly settling in, we did some spring cleaning. We washed the windows in the office and also decided to update your window into OpenComps by updating our front page. We are very happy with our new look and we hope you like it too!
As the image above showcases, don’t forget that we work hard to make sure we look (and work!) great on the desktop AND on smaller screens like your tablet and phone (yes, we are partial to Apple products, but we do work across all desktops, tablets and phones; but, please, pretty please, update your Internet Explorer 8 browser – we will look/work better and you’ll be safer).
Probably the much bigger news – despite the fact that we truly are very happy with our new home page – is the second part of this announcement: more FREE comps for everyone! Starting today, all user-generated comps will be available in full detail for free to all registered users. We think that’s fair – you contribute the comps (remember, you can contribute with just a free Basic account), everyone gets to see them and benefit from your generosity. This, in effect, brings us back to our roots as a free exchange of comps contributed and managed by the community.
So what do you get with a PRO subscription? All OpenComps’ research-generated comps (that’s our researchers uncovering and researching comps) will remain available only to PRO subscribers. Also, PRO subscribers continue to enjoy the full functionality of the site including field-specific search, creating and managing comps in comps sets, exporting comps in Microsoft Excel-compatible format, sophisticated filters and other advanced tools and functions we have and will continue to develop. Additionally, if you want to find a buyer, lender or JV equity partner for your property, as a PRO subscriber you can post unlimited For Sale, Seeking Debt or Seeking Equity listings. Not the least, your PRO subscription supports us to continue to develop and enhance the OpenComps’ experience and functionality.
We spend a lot of time uncovering and researching comps. So we think it’s fair that we get rewarded for this activity. However, our true vision is for the community at large to uncover and contribute comps, while we spend our efforts on creating sophisticated tools that give everyone insight into the data that everyone gathers, like our Trends and Charts or Browse By tools. We hope you decide to contribute comps that you know so that everyone can benefit and everyone gets more FREE comps!