The Ralph Bivins Project: Podcast Guest Sam Scott

HOUSTON – (Realty News Report) – Sam Scott heads the Commercial Gateway, the operator of the CommGate commercial information exchange, for the Houston Association of Realtors. He was a guest recently on the Ralph Bivins Project podcast. Excerpts of the conversation follow.

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BIVINS: CommGate has a lot of members out there. What are you hearing from your practitioners and the commercial real estate market about what’s going on right now?

SCOTT: Well, I think for the most part, there’s a little bit of disappointment that interest rates did not come down. Everybody started this year thinking that okay, this is finally the year that interest rates are going to start coming down and they were coming down a little bit there in February, and then as things heated up over in the Persian Gulf, the price of oil ticked back up, the gasoline got a little bit more expensive, and it just caused the consumer price index to start sliding the wrong way.

Our business really turns on cap rates, which are strongly influenced by interest rates, and as a result, it’s just kind of kept a lid on the market to a certain extent.

Now that’s not to say that things aren’t happening out there. Commercial does have a tendency to follow the rooftops, especially in a town like Houston. We are sort of known for our sprawling style of development. You know, something that really is facilitated by our invention of the municipal utility district back in the 1970s. It has allowed for a great deal of development out in unincorporated areas. As a result, Houston continues to sprawl.

You’re beginning to see a lot more development that just keeps going further out. You’ve got Valley Ranch up by Splendora that’s continuing to add lot of homes. Greater Conroe looks like it’s going to be at 1 million people by the end of the decade. The Brookshire Prairie is filling up with 500,000, a million square foot warehouses along with a lot of rooftops as well. Houston is getting poised to try to jump the Brazos. So, I think Sealy should be on the lookout for us. We’re coming. Even down south, even Brazoria County down along Highway 6, Manvel, Alvin are beginning to really take off. So again, it’s really out on the fringes of the city that we’re seeing so much growth.

It kind of reminds me of our old friend, Barton Smith would always do his annual economic outlook event and he always had a phrase about Houston real estate that Houston consumers need to just get in their car and drive until they qualify. That if you can’t afford the neighborhood that you’re looking at, just go a little further out and keep on going.

BIVINS: I wanted to give everybody a reminder about the economic outlook event that CommGate is hosting. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SCOTT: Sure. It’s going to be September 23rd, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. out at the Houston Country Club in the Potomac Ballroom. We’re going to hear from Dr. Ted C. Jones who was formerly the chief economist for Stewart Title. He’s currently serving as the chief economist for the Houston Realtors as well. He’s certainly an OG economist when it comes to real estate. He was the chief economist at the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M and really founded the whole science around MLS statistics. He came and camped out here at HAR back in the 1980s and worked with, back when the MLS was running on a mainframe, being able to extract data and analyze it and really sort of created the whole category. Ted has got a unique perspective. He now really monitors conditions across Texas.

Recently a report came out about the major markets that were leading with new home construction, and four of the top five were in Texas. There was Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. So, Ted’s going to be giving us a little bit of an overview of how those different markets stack up, but again with an emphasis on the commercial aspect of the economy.

So, the cost, it is a member benefit for people that are CommGate members. Regular HAR members get a 50% discount off the $50 ticket. And for the members of the commercial affiliated institutes such as CCIM and SIOR, they also get a complimentary admission. Last year’s event drew over 200 attendees. It was really kind of like a commercial family reunion.

BIVINS: Tell me a little bit more about CommGate.

SCOTT: CommGate was started before I came to work at HAR way back in the 90s, and again, just with the notion that we really needed a system that was really optimized and dedicated to the commercial practitioner. We started and launched sort of a separate CommGate system back in 2001, and it’s gone through some different vendors and changes over the years. We currently are working with Moody’s Analytics, and so it is a national platform, and it’s not just broker supplied data. We have a research team. We’ve got a three-person customer service team. We’ve got four research and data entry professionals that are constantly following up with firms to keep their inventories up to date and verified. We work with landlords, whether they’re a member of our service or not, to make sure that all the office and industrial listings for any building over 20,000 square feet, we’re surveying and updating that information. I mean, that’s probably one area where AI is really beginning to impact us now..

Trying to process inventories from companies and keep track of stuff. We’ve really been bringing some AI tools to bear in that area. We’ve got a great service … almost 1,000 members. Every major firm in town is on board. And one of the things that we’ve really found is that while CommGate.com and working with Moody’s through their distribution at Moodycre.com providing a national platform for our members and their listings, but you know har.com out-traffics all the other major real estate portals, other sites that are out there. As the web has matured and search engine optimization and AI exposure has become such a bigger part of how information is shared and how you attract viewers and business decision makers and people that are doing research on the web, our integration with har.com has become more and more important. And last year, we actually started, you can go to har.com/commgate or just go to har.com and hit the commercial button and actually see all of the CommGate listings integrated there on the har.com site. And so that’s greatly increased the visibility to humans that are searching but also to the AI bots and the engines that are ranking that stuff. If you’ve got a commercial listing, punch in the address and see how high up, you know, where the main hits are. And again, har.com has got the search engine exposure that is really giving our members a great deal of value and marketing oomph.

To LIsten to Entire Podcast Click Here for YouTube or Click Here for Spotify

Biography of Sam Scott

Sam Scott is the director of the Commercial Gateway for the Houston Association of Realtors. He manages the delivery of the commercial information exchange, CommGate, which focuses on commercial properties in Texas. He is responsible for coordinating data access policies and the procurement of information for use with the MLS.

Prior to joining HAR, Scott was the executive vice president of Landata, the real estate information subsidiary of Stewart Title. He holds an economics degree from Rice University.

Mark Your Calendar:

CommGate will host its Economic Outlook –Wednesday, Sept. 23 from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Houston Country Club. Economist Ted C. Jones, PhD, will present an economic forecast examining trends that will shape the real estate market in the coming year. Following the presentation, connect at a networking social with beverages and hors d’oeuvres. Free for members of CommGate, CCIM, and SIOR. Non-members $50. Link to Registration

THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT PODCAST

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Joe Rothchild and Jana Hayes with Keller Williams Houston Central

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Sam Scott of CommGate

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Stephen Meek of StreetLights Residential

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Mike Spears of Lee & Associates Houston

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Bob Parsley of Colliers Houston

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Mark Davis of Davis Commercial

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with David Hightower of Midway

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Alex Kamkar of Bold Fox Development

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Brad McWhirter of Trahan Architects

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Lacee Jacobs of Rebel Retail Advisors

LISTEN: THE RALPH BIVINS PROJECT with Danny Rice of Colliers