After a lot of coding and other tech things of which I don’t have a firm grasp, the all new Sibdu is LIVE!

We’ve made a ton of improvements, and I’ll be detailing them over the next week or two.

If you’re a member, you can log in with your current credentials and experience the improved interface and features. If you’re not, please feel free to sign up and poke around.

Enjoy!

Going once … Going twice …

Brokers turn to auctions to sell commercial property [full story]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some of the world’s largest commercial real estate service companies are turning to online auctions to sell property and debt to help kick-start the stalled U.S. commercial real estate market.

Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. said on Wednesday it had partnered with residential real estate online auction provider Real Estate Disposition LLC (REDC) to offer online auctions.

…

So … are there more auctions happening in your local market? Are they online, or is someone actually at the site, gavel in hand?

And more broader questions: Is this good for the CRE market? Is this a “flash in the pan” and an indicator of our current tough times, or are CRE auctions here to stay?

Discuss in comments, or at the Sibdu Web site.

Sibdu is the professional network for commercial, corporate and investment real estate, as well as for those in architecture, engineering and construction. Our Patent-Pending RFP (request for proposal) platform will energize CRE with a new way to secure spaces and do business, by letting others know exactly what you need and having them propose against your RFP. Sibdu then uses social-networking tools to help you shortlist proposals and decide which one is best for you.

Our first implementation of the RFP platform is for commercial brokerage — it greatly simplfies the search for space(s) to lease or buy, for those looking for a site or sites. So sign up for Sibdu today — it’s free.

I looked through a lot of videos, trying to find the best one for this somber day. While this one is actually a commercial, I couldn’t find a better way to remember what happened on this day eight years ago. In fact, this one outshines them all:

September 11, 2001. Lower Manhattan. Arlington, Virginia. Shanksville, Pennsylvania. We will never forget.

Wow, we’ve got some vocal CRE peeps on Twitter! It’s great!

We suggested last month that anyone who writes a commercial real estate or corporate real estate-related tweet on Twitter put the #cre hashtag at the end. The idea has really taken off!

We can’t take direct credit for it ourselves … after all, Twitter is a community, and its members make it strong (like Sibdu). We didn’t start this idea; in fact, I’m not sure who did. But it’s the CRE pros on Twitter — who are multiplying like bunnies, by the way — who are making it really work. Our promotion of it is just a small part of the success.

So remember, whenever you have a CRE-related tweet, always end it with #cre. It’s really short, and helps everyone track the CRE traffic on Twitter.

Want to see how often it’s being used? Click here to be taken to a live Twitter search of that hashtag. Enjoy!

Sibdu is the professional network for commercial, corporate and investment real estate, as well as for those in architecture, engineering and construction. Our Patent-Pending RFP (request for proposal) platform will energize CRE with a new way to secure spaces and do business, by letting others know exactly what you need and having them propose against your RFP. Sibdu then uses social-networking tools to help you shortlist proposals and decide which one is best for you.

Our first implementation of the RFP platform is for commercial brokerage — it greatly simplfies the search for space(s) to lease or buy, for those looking for a site or sites. So sign up for Sibdu today — it’s free.

Here’s a video I recently found that performs two jobs for the people who produced it:

1) Provides helpful information on LEED certifications for buildings and how LEED helps both building owner and tenant; and
2) Helps build the brand of both people involved; in this case, a commercial real-estate broker and a LEED AP architect. Now they’re both fully entrenched in the “green” movement in CRE.

Check it out:

The camera framing is unfortunate in this video — I’m guessing they did this with a laptop or desktop that had a Webcam that wouldn’t zoom, etc. The audio could be better, too.

But what the video has is helpful, useful information. It even has some graphics to help support what they’re saying, which shows that they do know how to go the extra mile.

More important, the video helps build both of their respective brands. The subject of having two allied professionals getting together and cutting a video has always been in the back of my mind as a potential blog topic. I’m glad these two have done it. Besides the camera shot and not-so-great audio, the video works pretty well.

Hopefully they’re using it on their own sites, Twittering about it, written a press release, maybe even writing an article on the video (or based on what the video was about). You need to tell people about your video to have them find it!

At the Sibdu network for professionals in commercial and corporate real estate, we have a special group that focuses on video in commercial real estate. Join Sibdu today (it’s free!), and participate in the group!

Imagine my surprise when I looked at my e-mail client this morning and saw the Subject line: The Return of Debt.

Sure, it got me interested. Then I realized the headline was from one of my favorite — and most entertaining — sources of commercial real-estate news and conferences/events: Bisnow.

That’s why I knew I’d smile when I read the beginning of the story. And I wasn’t disappointed:

While you were spotting whales at the beach (or great whites at Cape Cod, yikes) we saw something even rarer: 10-year debt financing.

Funny, yet very informative. And that’s what our friends at Bisnow are all about: news with an edge and an attitude.

It’s also about people — lots of people. They cover a lot of functions in their three current cities: Chicago, New York City and Washington, DC. They also cover a myriad of industries … from commercial real estate to tech to associations to … well, you get the picture.

They don’t cover all industries in every city; DC is the area they cover the most, followed by NYC and Chicago. But wherever they cover, they do it in their own inimitable style. And they usually beat out the “biggie” newspapers and other news sources in the process. Pretty sweet.

Being in CRE, I subscribe. And I think you should, too. So mosy on over to the Bisnow site and sign up for the CRE newsletter for your appropriate market.

And speaking of local coverage, keep Sibdu in mind. We have local groups set up for a myriad of communities in the U.S., and you can set up your own groups as well. Sign up for Sibdu today … it’s free, and you’ll be tapped into the best professional network for anyone in commercial and corporate real estate.

Guess what? According to this video from Forbes Magazine, the amount is down:

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

We haven’t been very “public” recently. That’s because we’re in major crunch mode right now. We’re hitting the new/improved Sibdu platform hard, looking for bugs, etc., prior to its release.

In other words, we’re thisclose to dropping “beta” from our logo. Believe me, it’ll be happy days around here when that happens. We’ve been working hard on getting this ready for all of you in commercial and corporate real estate — and we’re not forgetting about you all in architecture, engineering and construction, either.

Since we’re a small staff here at Sibdu, we’ve been focusing on testing efforts –  a.k.a. “doing everything we can to break it now, so it won’t break later” mode –  pretty much exclusively, while running the current Sibdu site (of course).

This does mean, though, that our blog posting frequency has significantly dropped. I’ll try to post one a week during this time, so that you know we’re still “alive and kicking,” as it were. And yes, this post counts as this week’s appearance here on the blog.

Also, our news audio podcast has been put on hiatus. Sorry, can’t be helped.

Everything blog- and podcast-wise should <crossing fingers> be back to normal the week of September 14th. If we’re done before that, we’ll come back early. Otherwise, see you the week of the 14th.

It’s actually much easier than you think — provided others “play nice” on this one.

I’ve gone over the concept of the hashtag in the past here at Sibdu Blog. If you need a quick catch-up on what a hashtag is, click here (opens in a new window).

It seems that those who are in the Twitter community and specialize in matters that are commercial and corporate real estate-related have taken it upon themselves to claim a hashtag of their very own. Through the use of this hashtag, you can keep up with the latest news and discussions about commercial/corporate real estate via Twitter. Details after the jump.

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One of the many features of Sibdu is our Market Match tab (which, when we launch the new-and-improved Sibdu, will be called CRE Tools). Besides having the ability to upload your listings and then distribute them to local and topical groups within Sibdu, you’ll be able to use those listings to respond to requests-for-proposal (RFPs) issued by those looking for real estate — brokers, investors, business owners, and so on.

This platform is so new and unique, we’ve put it in for a U.S. Patent. What makes it unique enough for a patent, we believe, is how we use social-networking tools to greatly shorten and improve the RFP process. If you’ve “done” the RFP process the hard way — issue it via paper and e-mail, go back and forth with phone calls and e-mails about it, deal with lengthy times involved, etc. — you know how much of a pain it can be.

Basically, Market Match is much more than your basic “needs-and-wants” e-mail or other form of communication. You know, the kind of thing that looks like this:

SEEKING SPACE: Looking for 1500-2000 SF in the downtown Bethesda area. Class A space. Something nice. Call Bondy Bonderman at Bonderman Realty, 301-xxx-xxxx.

We’ve got something much better — it’s property search on steriods, quite frankly. And while our way of conducting searches begins with the “demand” side, we’ve got plenty of tools to help the “supply” side as well.

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