COCIE: Saved Searches

By Catherine Erney
Xceligent
September 2006 In Contract

Do you find yourself pulling the same set of buildings over and over -- for example, a competitive property set? Is there a particular listing type that you are interested in? Do you want to know whenever a new MUH (that's multi-unit housing property for the uninitiated) over 20 units becomes available on the market? The CDX® has a solution for you! You can use Saved Search Criteria and Saved Search Results to track specific listings and properties right on your desktop. 

Saved Search Criteria
For example, let's say you're an agent and have a client interested in leasing 1,000 SF of Class A office space in the Downtown submarket. (First of all -- lucky you!) You'd begin by acting just as if you were doing a property search for this client. First, you would go into The Search and put in your client's requirements. Begin by checking the Office box in Step 1. In Step 2, For Lease is the default, so you wouldn't have to make any changes. Enter your client's size range in Step 3. Step 4 requires your geographic parameters. Finally in Step 5, enter any other necessities, such as parking ratio. In this scenario, you'd be sure to select `A' in Building Class. Now, just before you push the big orange "Search" button, look in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. See that Save As icon? This is your action step!

After you click on the Save As icon, a Saved Search Criteria Options dialog box will open up in the middle of your screen. This is where you name your SSC. We recommend using something memorable, like the client's name. (If you name it "Test" you're not likely to remember what you were testing after a few months.)

Beneath the Name field, which you will recognize as a required field because it is tinted faintly blue, you have the option to describe the project or record your criteria. Directly beneath that field, you can instruct the system to email you whenever a new property comes on line that meets your criteria, whether you want to see photos in the email, and whether you want the email daily or weekly. Finally, you can tell the system if you want to stop the email and when. Say that your client is coming for a tour on Thursday -- you can end the process on that date.

Now, you'd run the search just to see the properties currently in the database that meet your client's needs. It's that simple. You can expect your first email tomorrow showing you any new listings that your client might be interested in. 

To edit or delete your Saved Search Criteria, go to your homepage. You'll see the Saved Search Criteria box in the middle of the page. Within the SSC header bar, click on the big orange More button to the right. Here you will see all of the saved searches you have created. If you no longer need the SSC, just put a check in the box to its left and push the big orange Delete button in the upper right of the screen. This is also where you could refine your search criteria by selecting the blue Edit link next to the name you gave the SSC.

Unlike many processes, this is one that talks hard but walks easy. Try it and see.

Saved Search Results
You would use Saved Search Results (SSR) if you have a particular set of buildings that you look at over and over again. Perhaps you're a property manager with a suburban building portfolio. You probably have a set of competitive properties that you'd like to keep an eye on. Perhaps you'd like to monitor how much space was available or what the operating expenses were in that competitive set. To do that quickly and easily, you would create Saved Search Results. 

First, you would go to The Search and set broad parameters that would be likely to call up all of the properties in your set. Here's a scenario for the suburban property manager:

In Step 1, select the Office box. In Step 2, notice that this step defaults to For Lease, so you'll need to be sure to check the All Properties radio button. In Step 3, I would suggest that you put the minimum size range of your properties -- say, 20,000 SF, but I wouldn't bother with a maximum. Broad geographic parameters are required in Step 4; submarkets will be easier to select than zip codes. Click on the Market/Submarket icon and select from the list. Finally, pick your building class requirements in Step 5, remembering to keep them broad as well. It's much easier to pick through a long list of buildings and select the ones you want than it is to add properties later building by building.

Now that your criteria are established, run your search. With any luck, you'll have an extensive list that includes more buildings than you need. In that case, go through the list and check each property that you want to track. After you have made your selections, click on the Save Results icon in the upper right-hand corner of your screen.

The SRS Options dialog box will pop up. You are creating a new Saved Results Set so be sure to give it a memorable name. There's one small issue with Saved Results Sets -- the system saves them as Building or Listing searches depending how they were created. To add a property to an SSR, you need to pull it in the same way that you pulled in the other properties when the set was created. For example, if you created the search described above, it would be stored as a Property search because you searched for properties. To add another property, you'd need to run property search again. Go into The Search, select All Properties in Step 2 and choose your building by address in Step 4. When you click on the Save Results icon, choose the option Add to Existing Result Set Group.

That's really all there is to it. Again, this process talks hard but walks easy. Give it a try. You could decide to get an email whenever a new retail property was added to the data set. You could decide to keep an eye on bulk industrial buildings in the Rickenbacker area. With the CDX, you have a wealth of data at your fingertips to slice and dice at will. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.