RICIE properties see online exposure grow

Reaching Out: Don  Morash, broker and owner of Abbott Properties, stands in front of 28 Alhambra Road in Warwick. Morash said the exposure from a new shared database of Rhode Island commercial properties is valuable to him, because competition is fierce. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
Reaching Out: Don Morash, broker and owner of Abbott Properties, stands in front of 28 Alhambra Road in Warwick. Morash said the exposure from a new shared database of Rhode Island commercial properties is valuable to him, because competition is fierce. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

A new online platform for a database of Rhode Island commercial properties is designed to attract both out-of-state and local investors.

Late last summer, the Rhode Island Commercial Information Exchange joined forces with the R.I. Commerce Corp. to integrate its database of commercial listings for sale or lease on Commerce Corp.’s website, www.GreaterRI.com.

Providing accurate data as well as statewide and nationwide exposure that supplements other popular commercial database networks such as www.LoopNet.com are distinct advantages, Realtors say.

“The beauty of the website is: We already have this [RICIE] database and the brokers already use it,” explained Art Yatsko, president of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors. “The advantage now is, when you call into Commerce RI or get a lead on someone looking to [buy or lease commercial property], they get current, correct data.”

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Don Morash, the owner/broker for Abbott Properties in Warwick, said while he doesn’t always track where the interest in his commercial listings is coming from, the exposure from the shared database is what’s valuable to him, because competition, even on the Internet, is fierce.

“Exposure is going to help everybody – the brokers representing these properties and the owners who want them sold or leased,” he said. “We all cooperate with each other.”

In February, Jim Moore, president of the Providence-based R.I. Commercial and Appraisal Board of Realtors and a broker with Peter M. Scotti and Associates Inc. in Providence, had about eight commercial properties in the database.

In early August, prior to the sharing of the RICIE database on GreaterRI.com, a property at 122 Sakonnet Point Road in Little Compton listed on the RICIE site sold to Newport Experience, after being marketed in New York and New England. The boutique hotel, restaurant and banquet facility known as Stonehouse opens at that location this spring, said Kristen West, assistant director of marketing for the Newport Experience.

Stonehouse is the type of commercial property that generated regional interest from potential buyers in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and it might have gotten even more interest if marketed on the Commerce site, Moore said.

“Memberships and listings numbers have doubled over the past year with RICIE,” Moore said, “so there is good potential with traction for the [GreaterRI.com] site and for its being a valuable tool for brokers in Rhode Island.”

In an emailed response to questions, Commerce Corp. spokeswoman Kayla Rosen noted: “It is crucial that businesses looking to relocate to or expand in Rhode Island can easily find suitable real estate. Though this [database] project is still in development, we’re excited to be working with … the Rhode Island Commercial Information Exchange to develop a convenient, comprehensive listing of available properties.”

The idea to integrate the RICIE database – which shares its listings with more than 30 CIE databases across the country – into the GreaterRI.com site dates back a few years, said Michael Letendre, vice president of MLS and member services for RIAR.

“They felt having our database would boost the content on their site,” he said. “It took months of contractual and data-integrity work to make it work properly.”

As of late February, there were 638 listings in the database and hundreds of registered users, Letendre said. Web views to the database have increased from 1,246 in early February of 2014 to 1,941 this past month, now that it is also on GreaterRI.com, he said.

“The reason why it was attractive for [Commerce RI] is, in their world, there’s no one point of entry. They have commercial brokers feeding them data by logging in manually. Commerce RI can enter data on behalf of brokers. They’d prefer to get the data from one source [RICIE]. For us, it’s adding another, higher level of marketing.”

Costs to RICIE to share its database were minimal, Letendre said.

Commerce RI didn’t pay anything to add the database and has no costs associated with maintaining it, Rosen said.

Morash, the Warwick broker, said the economy continues to “seesaw,” but he had 89 commercial properties for sale or lease in February. Morash and Moore noted many commercial properties are more local in appeal – and include retail spaces and multifamily houses, which are technically commercial investments.

One of the properties Morash had in February in the RICIE database and on the GreaterRI.com website was a vacant building that once housed a Dollar Rent-A-Car at 28 Alhambra Road in Warwick. The building is near a former hair salon at 1975 Post Road that, if it sold with the Alhambra property, could be demolished to better expose the latter to site traffic, Morash said.

In fact, Morash said, “We could put together three other buildings and create a whole city block” to better develop Warwick into a destination. “Somebody has got to take these one-story buildings and replace them with multiple-level buildings near the [T.F. Green] airport,” he added. “There [are] adjacent properties owners are considering selling off for the right price.”

He declined to disclose those sellers, but added that the GreaterRI.com site now has the potential to boost exposure of such properties regionally, as well as locally.

“If [buyers] look on the GreaterRI website and it generates a phone call, I’d know it was helping,” he said. •

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