Useful Apps for Commercial Real Estate Practitioners

It’s been awhile since my last post on real estate apps for your smart phones and tablets. My last post focused more on residential real estate. This time, my focus will be on commercial real estate. In a couple of weeks I’ll revisit the residential real estate apps.

Searching for commercial real estate:

LoopNet—The download for this app is free but to access all the features you need to be a paid subscriber. Good app for accessing what is available now. There is an app for the iPhone, iPad and Android and web access geared towards searching from your smartphone.

CoStarGo—The download is also free but like LoopNet, to access all of the features you will need to be a paid subscriber.  This is a good app for historical information needed to determine comps, conduct analysis, or review physical information on the property. This app appears to only be available for the iPad.

CRE investment analysis:

TheAnalyst Real Estate—This app, for iPhone and iPad, provides a whole suite of real estate analysis tools specifically designed for commercial real estate and investment real estate.  You can calculate 5 and 10 year IRR/NPV, access a mortgage calculator or calculate the time value of money for potential investment property, analyze leasing vs owning, run a loan analysis or generate other reports. For a monthly fee you can generate formal reports with your company name, logo and contact information.

Special calculators:

PowerOne—This app is a financial calculator that combines an algebraic and RPN calculator with simple, customizable, spreadsheet-like templates, giving you hundreds to choose from.  You can create your own, keep a history and share with others.  At this time it is only available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

10bii—The app is identical to the HP 10bii financial calculator that many trained on when becoming a Certified Commercial Investment Member. This app is also available on more platforms including iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, Mac OS X and Android.

Other useful tools:

JotNot scanner—This is not a real estate specific app but is very useful if you are in the field a lot. It allows you to scan a multi-page document from your iPhone or iPad.

Dropbox and Google Drive—DropBox allows you to store documents, photos, etc. in the cloud an access from every device on which you’ve installed the Dropbox software. You can upload a document from one device into your “dropbox” and then access it from your other computers, phone or tablets.  Google Drive works the same way.
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