COCIE News

By Catherine Erney
Xceligent
March 2007 In Contract

Recently, we have been writing about the more advanced functions of the database. Let's take a step back and start at the very beginning ...

If you're a founding member of the database, you probably remember what C-Rex stands for and you probably sign in at www.xceligent.com. In fact, I'll bet you have our site bookmarked in your Favorites and would be lost if your computer crashed and you had to find it all over again.

Like so many other features of our database, there's more than one way to do just about everything. Did you know that you can also sign in at www.cocie.org?

The COCIE site features:

• data entry forms for each property type, 
• links to the COCIE story, 
• a public property search, 
• a place for you to sign up for classes, 
• all of the Tips & Tricks written for In Contract
• AND a place to log in to the database.

The Xceligent site has

• Weekly featured property listings in each of our different markets,
• an "add your listing" button for non-members,
• an overview of our enhanced products, 
• a map showing our different markets around the country, 
• Press clippings & information about our company, 
• AND a place to log in to the database.

We're not asking you to change your habits, but whichever site you habitually use, you might want to check out the other one just for fun.

COCIE's Commercial Data Exchange is a property-centric database, rather than an MLS. Where an MLS contains only records that are for lease or sale, we are currently tracking 11,830 commercial office industrial and retail properties in the Columbus Metro market, which consists of Franklin and the contiguous counties.

There are 70 - 90+ potential data elements for each property, including such fields as building size, district and parcel number, minimum clear height, year built, zoning, traffic count, HVAC, photographs and many more.

Obviously, the data requirements vary by property type. At almost 5 years old, this database is quite mature. In other words, you can trust that most of the data elements have already been collected on most of the buildings we are tracking.

Because all the groundwork has been done, the first step to adding a new listing is to check to see if the property is already on the system. While there are multiple ways to bring up a property, the best way to start when adding a new listing is, not surprisingly, Add or Edit Listing:

Here's the key to doing a good and accurate property check -- less is more. Don't put too much information into the form. It's best to use only Street Number and Street Name -- and no other information, not City, not Zip code -- just street number and street name.

While that may seem counter intuitive, the reasoning behind it is quite simple: the database recognizes only perfect matches. So if you put East Mound Street into the form -- and we have entered the building as E Mound St -- the database will not make the connection.