I’ve always called property flyers the “Gold Standard of Commercial Real Estate Data,” but they can really be a pain in the neck to manage. On one hand, flyers are essential to any broker’s business—the complete, accurate, detailed information about a property on a single, easily shared document. With maps, photos and floor plans, a well-designed flyer is the next best thing to visiting the property itself.
On the other hand, all that valuable data is locked into the flyer—it’s hard to extract and collect it without manually typing it all over again (more on this later). So what makes property flyers so valuable—and so frustrating?
The Gold Standard
1. They’re complete. A well-executed property flyer tells other agents or site selectors everything they need to know—location, zoning, terms, square footage, price and other critical information—in one easy-to-reference file.
2. They’re detailed. Floor plans. Interior and exterior photos. Distance to the nearest Starbucks. A flyer gives prospective tenants a feel for the space before they even visit.
3. They’re accurate. How often have you seen a listing just sit there, week after week, with uncorrected errors and out-of-date information? When you create the flyer yourself, you know every detail is correct.
4. They’re immediate. Videos are great, but does a busy site selector have time to watch 20 videos? It’s much more efficient to browse 20 PDF flyers.
5. They’re a physical takeaway for clients. As much as we want to be paperless, many clients still respond to market surveys, summaries and binders that include these colorful flyers. Having a physical flyer available for that unexpected drop-in visitor or a new contact willing to help you network is critical.
Data, where and when you need it.
Sure, property flyers are usually electronic PDF files. You can easily save them, forward them via email, and print them when necessary. But how do you organize them? This is where flyers become frustrating.
Organizing properties takes time, as does searching for them later. An even bigger problem with flyers is getting the information out of them. Manually entering the essential data into another spreadsheet file or database is tedious and time-consuming.
For example, BrokerSavant research shows it takes an average of 23 minutes to enter the data from just one flyer. Depending on who does the grunt work and how much they get paid, brokers and firms are spending thousands of dollars every day manually transferring data from flyers. Not to mention the costs of those manual entry errors you always seem to discover at the worst possible time.
New technology has allowed BrokerSavant to perfect data extraction that works with any PDF flyer.Just click, drag and drop, and it populates 30+ property data fields into your online portfolio, CRM, database or whatever format you need it in. We’ve recently made this technology available to brokers with Coldwell Banker Commercial—and they can get started for free on their intranet site. Flyers are still the ‘Gold Standard’ for accurate, up-to-date property data, but organizing and managing them doesn’t have to be a pain in the neck!
By: Clay Rankin, CEO, BrokerSavant
