Catylist 2009 Highlights
Despite the tough economic environment of 2009, we had a really good year here at Catylist. Here are a few highlights:
- We saw strong growth in CIE usage. 70,000 new commercial property listings were added to our database in 2009 – an increase of 23% over 2008 growth. Logins were up 8% this year.
- Our search engine optimization and syndication efforts started paying off this year. Listings on the Catylist network of CIEs saw a 49% increase in traffic over 2008. We added some major distribution points for member listings, including CommercialSource, AcreScout, and RE Journal.
- We greatly expanded our research tools, and improved data integrity. We’re tracking more property statistics now, and adding lots of tools to help administrators manage their local databases of properties and comparables. Our Las Vegas client was the first to put these to the test, building a research database with almost 200,000 Sale Comps & Building Records.
- We added several new Commercial Information Exchanges this year, covering areas including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New England. We’ll also be launching CIEs in Florida and Wisconsin this month.
- We’ve extended our relationships with several major associations via long-term renewals.
- We also expanded our CIE technology into the corporate world this year, building an international CIE for RE/MAX Commercial and integrating our property search engine into the Keller Williams Commercial national website.
- We created a Twitter account and contributed some posts to the #CRE community.
- We added Nancy McKellar to our team. She’s been doing a great job providing leadership and ideas to our CIE administrators around the country via regular webinars and a new online message board.
- We received hundreds of thoughtful suggestions, and added hundreds of great features to the software including a real-time Market Monitor that allows our users to track CIE activity relevant to them, integration with Google Earth, new Traffic Reports, and specialty searches for Auctions, Price Reductions, Distressed & Green Properties.
- We redesigned Catylist.com to better describe the products and services we’re known for.
- Finally, we shook hands with thousands of commercial professionals at various conferences, demonstrations, and events. We found the face-to-face interaction to be very motivating and hope to continue building great relationships this year!
Focusing on providing simple, useful, and affordable tools has served us well, and we want to thank the commercial real estate community for their support this year. We’re looking forward to a productive 2010 — we have a lot in the works and you’ll be hearing more about that soon.
Happy New Year from the folks at Catylist!