Government Technology

Cape Coral, Fla., Saves Money With Online Database for Commercial Properties


August 11, 2010 By

As businesses shuffle from building to building in a given year, keeping track of occupancies can get tricky and costly.

That used to be the case in Cape Coral, Fla., which had been paying $30,000 a year on a tool that city officials said produced inaccurate results. City officials urged commercial brokers to put available properties into the free tool. Few complied, and those who did rarely posted updates, which forced city officials to have to hunt down the data for interested parties.

"We could not get our arms around it," said Audie Lewis, business recruitment specialist for the city.

Now the city's Economic Development Office (EDO) has moved to a different model to track available commercial properties in the city. EDO recently announced a subscription to CoStar, a national online company that tracks commercial properties for realtors and other subscribers. In a joint membership with the Community Redevelopment Area, the city only pays $230 a month, which means it saves about $27,000 a year.

The fact that the city isn't selling any property factors into the special pricing, Lewis added, acknowledging that local governments are not the company's target audience. But with CoStar, city officials can customize the tool to fit their needs, sorting the data by conditions such as size, cost range and demographics of verified commercial properties.


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