OpenComps Blog
Continuing with the 2013 wrap up, let’s take a look at the year’s most active sell-side brokerage firms. As we pointed out in our year-end review, last year was a super active year. That means there were plenty of happy faces at the nation’s top brokerage firms.
When we set about to write the 2013 review and compile the data – as any good writer – we reviewed our 2012 post. And we realized we were probably going to finish our 2013 piece with the same wish: “to bring our subscribers a more visual and immediate way to better understand the trends that are occurring in OpenComps’ dataset.” And we didn’t want to make the same promise twice. So we stopped writing reviews and started writing code!
Today – together with our 2013 review – we are proud to announce the new Trends & Charts section (see here for hotel, office, retail or multifamily). Currently, you can find it in our Browse By section (dropdown) together with the other data aggregation screens. And we are making it open for every one, reserving for our PRO Subscribers the advanced features such as filtering, longer time period (20 years) and advanced chart tools such as data zoom and save to PNG. This charting tool combined with its extensive search filter can produce really outstanding data insights. We hope you will consider unlocking it’s full potential with a PRO subscription.
And now onto our 2013 review. The chart that follows gives you a quick overview.
While we were busy with our new re-design over the summer, the transactions market didn’t let up either during the “quiet” months of summer which are supposed to be filled with family vacations and BBQs. With the third quarter of 2013, here is an update on our quarterly and year-to-date statistics.
The Q3 one-word summary is: HOT. As in summer hot, but really as a hot transactions market that we are seeing at the moment. Can it get even hotter? We think so. We think we are in a cyclical upturn which hopefully has more legs to run.
We are very excited about our new design. How about you? But we are not only excited about how (good) we look now on the desktop. The even bigger news is that we are now optimized to look great on your phone or tablet too! Have you tried us out?
There is no new address to remember; no server redirection based on device detected (just go to opencomps.com). Thanks to our new front-end framework, we were able to create a responsive design that adapts to whatever device you are using.
Just as fall is getting started to do a makeover to the trees outside, we are ready with our site makeover too. We worked hard on it all summer and, dare we say, we are very happy with the results. But the final judges will be you, our users…. so we would love to hear your thoughts!
Just to be clear, our makeover is just like a new suit… we may look different, but our simplicity in functionality is still there as you (hopefully, just as much as we) like it. The pockets, buttons and sleeves are still in the same place on the suit, just like our functionality is still there where you can see it and access it conveniently and expediently.
With the second quarter behind us, we wanted to update you on the volume of transactions we recorded in OpenComps and the trends we are observing. We also take a look at the first half of the year as well.
The overwhelming feeling for Q2 activity is… whew! Things are cooking and stirring across all the asset types and assets are trading at a fairly brisk speed.
With the first quarter of 2013 behind us, we thought we should take a look at the volume and trend data. After observing a decrease in volume and cumulative value for hotel transactions at the end of 2012 compared to 2011, the trend in 2013 has reversed significantly and for the better. First quarter of 2013 saw 150 transaction worldwide and 113 in the U.S. vs. only 54 and 52, respectively, in the first quarter of 2012. That is a jump of 178% worldwide and 117% in the U.S. (Naturally, our tracking of non-U.S. transaction is still very sparse, so the real observable trend is in the U.S.).
We also decided to provide you with a summary of the distributions by property type and location type for the first quarter. Interestingly, investors are almost equally focused between Urban and Suburban properties with the focus on Upscale and Upper Upscale properties. (We recently updated our property types classifications to align ourselves with the latest STR classifications; clean up, though, is still in process).