People ask me about old listings on the service and why they are not deleted.

Old listings and new listings are used for networking. 

First off let me assure you that you do not have to look at old listings.

All listings are dated.

You can search by date.

Many are not aware of new changes to the service. 

They are used for networking purposes.  The contacts for million dollar type properties and the knowledge of who deals in them and the contacts they have can help you with your next deal. What is important is to establish a business relationship with people who you identify as dealing in the type of property you are interested in, and then explore opportunities to do business. Networking is free.  The old listings can identify people with whom you can possibly do business with.

For those who do not want to do that:

There are four categories of listings on ICIWorld you can search by:

1. active listings;
    
2. inactive listings;
    
3. sold listings;
    
4. expired listings.

We suggest you search active listings.

The responsibility of maintaining the integrity of the database is the members who place the information.

Only active listings are emailed out to the industry.

If you click on Latest World you get the latest up to the second listings.  These are active listings.

There is a responsibility on the part of the real estate industry to look after their information.  After all there is a substantial commission to be made for timely information in a competent fashion.

However there are some who may have information that has not been up dated.

Is this a waste of time and of no benefit to you when you call them to enquire about a property?  For example:

let us say you were looking for a $1 Million shopping center.  And let us say that the salesperson for that shopping center did not mark it sold.  First they should have, however:

• can it benefit you to find out how much it sold for?
   
• is it possible that because that person deals in shopping centers that they may know about other shopping centers not on this service and if you develop a good business relationship with them, you could work with them on it?
   
• is it possible that the person may not be able to help you now, but in three weeks comes in to another shopping center exactly what you were looking for, and if you have a great business relationship with that person they may call you and tell you about it?

So really when think about it, it is not the listings that are really important, it is the people behind the service with whom you can network with.

44% of the deals in one recent month were done that way.  A person called on one ad which did not suit the person, they discussed other things not on the service, developed a business relationship and went off and did a deal.

There are over two billion people on the Internet. 74% of people searching for real estate are searching for listings. 96% are searching for listings. ICIWorld has both residential and commercial listings all in a way that you get the calls.

The web sites we supply require that you log in a minimum of every 90 days or your listings will automatically go inactive and not show up on other brokers web sites.  This way it encourages brokers to keep their listings up to date.

For commercial, expired listings are caused by some who do not renew their membership on time before the renewal date.  You can search these separately. Does that make their listings worthless?  No.  Because a members membership expires and they have not renewed on time, does that mean their listings are not active?  No.  Their listings may well be quite active, it just that their membership may have expired and they have not renewed yet.

Active members have access to all this information and can contact expired members listings to follow up on these listings.

When you have buyers for plazas or apartment buildings, do these listings expire?  No.  They probably are active for a lifetime because these kinds of buyers are always looking!

We have found some brokers prospect the old listings.  The reason?  Looking for properties with creative financing where the owner may carry a mortgage.  If a person has not sold a property for a year or two, might they be likely to consider taking back a mortgage?  They may be more motivated to sell.

So if you only want active listings going back 3 months, or 6 months or one year, you can do it.

We had one property an $18M quarry that was on our service for three years.  If I had arbritrarily deleted that listing, that broker would never have made that connection.

There are sold listings and they should have the word Sold in the subject line.

Each month we send out circulars to encourage members to modify their listings a minimum of once every 30-60-90 days. That is because we have seen that the majority of deals occur at the top half of the database, not at the bottom.  People simply get so busy working the top half they do not have a chance to get down to the bottom.  Secondly when a person renews their listing within 30-60-90 days, not only does it go back to the top of the database that is getting 50,000 people readership but also instantly and automatically the listing is emailed out to the industry.  There are over 10,000 emails delivering listings daily to the public.  If a broker member does not renew his listing, they completely miss this circulation to the public, they actually can be missing doing deals and not realize it.

Many of the largest deals in the world are not listed on ICIWorld but the members, contacts of members know many of them. So the bottom line it is networking through members that is the power of the service and the listings help people find you and vice versa to network and you will uncover these opportunities.

When you search for gold you have to do some digging to find the gold nuggets.

90% of shopping centers are not on real estate boards.  90% of apartment buildings are not on real estate boards. From my unique position in the marketplace I believe there is ten times the information available that one can place on a real estate board type service. This service helps to uncover these opportunities.

Many deals over $3M to $100M and up are started from the Wants.

This service is constantly changing but keeping the free flow of information is important.

To follow up every listing would increase staff expenses as to make the monthly cost prohibitive.

To pick a date to delete listings would remove opportunities that are still available.

Better to educate the searching public as to searching by status: ie: active listings, and using the date feature.  That way people will not miss the diamond of opportunities that can be found by networking.

We can schedule a Webinar anytime to go over this and we would appreciate the opportunity to explain it further. 

Your input is valuable to help guide the service and we appreciate your feedback.

Any questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely

Gary Nusca, CCIM
ICIWorld.net