Sometimes you’re just not ready to contact a real estate specialist. Maybe you’re just starting to think about leasing your first commercial space. Or you think you may need to expand your existing space when your lease is up in a year. Or you’re just starting to consider a second location on the other side of town.
So, you’re ready to do a little research on your own so you can figure out your next move. Stay or go? Shrink or grow? Commit or quit?
It makes sense to start checking out what options are out there to get a general idea of what types of properties are available, whether lease rates are increasing or decreasing, where your competition is located, etc. (“homework”).
But where to look for properties? If you do a general Internet search – commercial real estate for sale – you get 201,000,000 results. Hey, I’m a go-getter, but that’s way more than I’d want to bite off.
Let’s add a location:Â commercial real estate for sale sioux falls sd. Wow. Only 108,000 results. I still don’t have that kind of time, and neither do you. But I want you to do your homework. Doing homework means you have the information you need to make a decision. And making a decision means you have a plan for your business. And who doesn’t want that?
So, I’ve done a little homework to get you started on your homework. If you are looking for commercial real estate in the Sioux Falls metropolitan area, you can certainly search every brokerage’s individual web page, but if you’re looking for the most information in one place, consider the following.
I ran two property searches on the most popular local or national websites that compile commercial data – using only “Sioux Falls, SD” and either “For Sale” or “For Lease” as the search parameters.
The results:
1. LoopNet.com. This search engine returned 193 properties for lease and 172 properties for sale. At least basic information is available on every listing, along with a convenient link to contact the listing agent. This is the most comprehensive site we could find that is also free to buyers/tenants.
2. Co-Star/ShowCase.com. Co-Star owns ShowCase.com. This search engine returned many more property results – 315 for lease and 358 for sale – but 268 and 272 of the search results, respectively, are hidden without a paid membership. This makes LoopNet a better option with the most results.
3. HomeView.com. This local site is owned by the REALTOR(r) Association of the Sioux Empire, Inc. (RASE), and contains the commercial listings entered into the RASE Multiple Listing Service (MLS). The site returned 170 total search results, 129 for lease, 25 for sale and 16 that were available both for sale and for lease.
4. ciMLS.com. This site returned 130 for sale results and 75 properties available for lease – better than looking at individual sites, but not enough to make the top 3.
5. CommercialSource.com. Commercial Source is a website owned and operated by an organization near and dear to our hearts – the National Association of REALTORS(r) (NAR). While the search results only returned 51 properties available for lease and 25 available for sale, we have to include it here as an up-and-coming commercial real estate website.
Face it – the number one place to start a search without engaging a professional is the Internet, so maximize your time and minimize your work by checking out the websites above. Keep checking back though, the data aggregating industry is constantly changing as new competitors continue to enter the market.
Sellers/Landlords
Don’t see your property or available space on the websites above? Why not?! Ask your broker what they are doing to market your property on the Internet, and make sure you are satisfied with their marketing platform.
Have a commercial real estate question? E-mail it to Linda@JimDunham.com and we just may answer it on-line!
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