NAR Releases New Commercial Real Estate Listing Service

The National Association of REALTORS (NAR) launched a new commercial real estate listing service called Commercial Source yesterday. The new site can be found at www.commercialsource.com and should offer the commercial real estate leader LoopNet.com a run for their money. With the strong backing of NAR, Commercial Source already has a leg up on the competition.

Browsing the site I found it to be laid out well, with an attractive design. As an investor, though, one problem I came across was with the property searches. It doesn’t appear that they have any sort of advanced search, and their available options are a bit limited. If I’m trying to narrow down my search to a specific type of property, I'm going to have a more difficult time on this site than LoopNet, for example.

As this is a new site, though, I’m sure changes such as this will come with time. For a first release, I think NAR did a good job on this site and I will definitely be keeping my eye on Commercial Source. Other than LoopNet, I really haven’t been impressed with any of the other commercial real estate listing sites out there, so this new competition is welcome in my eyes. Hopefully this pushes both sites to make improvements and become even better.

Real Estate Websites ActiveRain And Move Inc. Set Trial Date For December

A lawsuit filed by ActiveRain against Move Inc. has finally received clearance for a court date and jury trial that will take place in December.

Move Inc. (formerly Homestore) is a public company that operates move.com and Realtor.com through a contract with the National Association of Realtors (NAR) trade group. ActiveRain is a social networking online community with close to 75,000 members who use the site for interest groups, blogging and online networking.

Among other things, the lawsuit alleges that Move Inc. approached ActiveRain in hopes of purchasing their website, and then intentionally fell into breach of contract by engaging in fraudulent activity and unfair competition during the failed acquisition. Move has countered that they believe their actions were without malicious intent, and conducted in fairness.

The lawsuit further alleges that officials at ActiveRain were misled when they were told that the acquisition was nearly complete. They believe this is further proof that Move was trying to acquire “highly sensitive material about its members and its network or platform in electronic format, in anticipation of the supposed impending closing.”

Both parties are currently in the process of gathering data and depositions.