Olympus Property Management in the News

Site revamps local real estate market
The Bakersfield Californian – Bakersfield, CA Published 07/01/2004
Jennifer Plotnick, Californian Staff Writer

"A property match has been found." Those six words continue to make life a little sweeter for Chandler Wonderly, owner of Olympus Property Co., which invests primarily in apartment buildings. Olympus is based in Bakersfield, but because of success through a commercial real estate Web site, Wonderly has moved to Dallas. And he said his Texas operation is at least twice the size of the Bakersfield office.

Wonderly uses the Web site LoopNet.com, where he searches a nationwide database of commercial property listings. And after a year of operation, people say it's putting Bakersfield on the commercial property map. "It's really been a good thing," Wonderly said of LoopNet. "Everybody's using it in the commercial field." He is not a real estate broker, and says the site is effective for everyday people to use.

In June last year, LoopNet launched a page dedicated to Bakersfield listings. Local commercial brokerages say they prefer to go straight to the national Web page, which they say is effective and is changing commercial real estate dealings in Kern County.

"It has been the most significant tool to hit the commercial market in at least seven years," said Marc Thurston, senior vice president of the investment services group Grubb & Ellis/ASU & Associates. "It has created a national multiple listing service for commercial properties." Bakersfield and the Central Valley have been put on the map through the national site, Thurston said. About half of the commercial buildings in Kern County are owned by people outside the county, he said.

LoopNet launched Bakersfield.LoopNet.com in June last year, said spokesman Cary Brazeman. The local property listings go into a national database, which has a half-million registered users nationwide, running the gamut of real estate professionals to private citizens, he said. The Bakersfield site includes statistics on Kern County commercial dealings. When the local site launched, 2.0 million square feet of commercial property were available for lease, Brazeman said. Roughly 3.4 million square feet are available for lease on the site now. Similarly, local property for sale for the launch was valued at $350 million. Now, property listed is valued at $475 million, Brazeman said.

The increase can be chalked up to an increasingly active market, said Vince Roche, first vice president of commercial brokerage CB Richard Ellis' Bakersfield office. "We're in a very active investment market," Roche said. "We put all of our property on LoopNet with very few exceptions so the property can gain maximum exposure."

Thurston said his business has also grown due to using LoopNet. When he first started listing property on the site, Thurston estimates he received three to eight calls per listing. Now, 20 to 50 people call him, on average, per listing. "I have sold a lot of property to brokers who found it on LoopNet," he said.

But, like Wonderly, private residents are also searching the site to find commercial property. Thurston estimates about 40 percent of the deals he closed in the past year were contacts through LoopNet. Of those he estimated two-thirds of the people were brokers and one-third were buyers. Wonderly tailors his searches on the site. For example, he inputs the type of property he's looking for and LoopNet sends him an e-mail when a property is listed that fits the parameters he chooses. He said he likes the site because he doesn't have to depend on a broker telling him what properties are available. He can see for himself.