The Real Deal sat down with the team from Moody’s Analytics to discuss the firm’s journey toward becoming the global standard for real estate decision-making. With its powerful Catylist platform, Moody’s Analytics CRE is leveraging its unique position as a leader in the commercial real estate sector to bring together previously disparate parts of the industry under a single umbrella, connecting its vast pool of data with the insights and analyses produced by the firm’s team of economists. Beyond simply providing information faster and more efficiently, Moody’s Analytics is tackling the most difficult challenge of all: helping CRE professionals surface the right data and insights to make better, faster decisions.
“We live in a time where there’s always going to be more data tomorrow than there is today,” says Vivek Thadani, Senior Director of CRE Product Strategy at Moody’s Analytics. “But rather than a pile of unusable numbers, what people really want more of is better, high-quality insight, and the ability to wield it effectively.” Moody’s Analytics CRE tools, which cater to brokers, lenders, and investors, are built on the foundation of this ever-expanding data, pulled from market participants, a full-time CRE research staff, and from across the entire Moody’s enterprise. What makes Moody’s Analytics platforms different from competitors is that their expansive data is then layered in with alternative dimensions of risk, like climate, tenant, and supply chain risks, to give users a more complete view of their market and risk exposure.
“This unique method of connecting the dots goes beyond core property data,” said Thadani. “Our in-house economists provide actionable insights, rather than mere information, to our customers, giving them industry-wide context rather than just synthesized data.”
But the team isn’t stopping there. The suite of commercial real estate solutions is built to enhance the way CRE professionals already work and are designed to fit into the day-to-day, rather than disrupt it. “Over the past couple of years,” said Thadani, “we’ve really placed an emphasis on brokers and addressing the specific challenges they face. We’ve invested in a world-class team with a wealth of experience, and we’re really excited about the progress and partnerships we’re making.”
Evolving Tools for a Changing World
So what does this mean in practice for the brokerage community? “We hear it from brokers all the time,” explains Senior Director Allen Benson, “as the CRE industry is evolving, brokers are facing new challenges and obstacles. They’re expected to have a 360-degree view of their market, to have reliable data and analytics to inform their transactions, and to do it all faster than ever. Moody’s Analytics is really focused on easing some of that pain and making transactions as seamless as possible.” Catylist is the CRE platform used by thousands of brokers around the nation to market, search for, and analyze properties in their area. The program features a fully researched database, coupled with on-screen analytics, unlimited listing capabilities, and automatic national exposure on Catylist’s well-known public marketplace, Commercial Exchange.
“Speed is also essential to brokers,” continued Benson, “so by giving them comprehensive property-level and listing-level data, they can build pricing structures, market properties, and compare lease and sale terms more quickly than ever.” Catylist features detailed information on 6.5 million commercial properties and fully researched listing information in 23 markets, allowing its users to quickly aggregate data, comps, and relevant market statistics into client-ready reports.
All of this new information gathering is possible thanks to Moody’s Analytics Catylist’s partnerships with over 70 REALTOR associations, hundreds of economic development communities, and thousands of CRE brokerages across the country. Moody’s Analytics continues to partner with key industry players, and just announced a partnership with CCIM Technologies to augment Catylist’s listing and market data and give CCIM members streamlined access to an all-in-one marketing and listings platform that combines research data, a suite of reporting and marketing tools, and national exposure for listings.
The information generated by members of these partnerships helps Catylist work faster and more efficiently for everyone who uses it. “The value of these partnerships really can’t be overstated,” said Thadani. “Not only does it ensure that we have the most up-to-date information coming directly from the brokers working on these transactions, but it means we can respond quickly to the dynamic CRE environment and adjust our product accordingly.” These partners offer the team at Moody’s Analytics direct feedback, ensuring that the product is working for brokers and delivering the information they need when they need it.
“The word that we use a lot is velocity,” says Benson. “That means, how fast can that listing that the brokers just created become available to the brokerage community?” When they input listing and transaction information into Catylist, brokers are contributing live data to an evolving, robust model which then informs every other decision they and their fellow brokers make. “Thanks to this constant updating by users,” Benson says “that velocity is as fast as I’ve ever seen.”
Bringing the Commercial Real Estate Industry Together With Technology
Facilitating these unique data connections is just the beginning of how Moody’s Analytics sees its role in this space. “We really want to bring the industry together and help forge new connections between CRE professionals,” says Thadani. That means not only connecting brokers with one another and providing unique insights that help them be more successful but also bringing the rest of the CRE industry, namely investors and lenders, onto the same platform and giving them access to these powerful tools and insights. “So when you want to discover relationships, when you want to send data, it can all happen on one platform,” says Thadani. “That’s a way to enable and supercharge what’s already happening in the marketplace.”
By bringing the CRE community onto a single platform, Moody’s Analytics is working to centralize industry data so that it can be understood and acted upon with maximum efficiency. Catylist builds on Moody’s Analytics’ foundation with lenders and leverages its in-house analytics to give brokers the best possible solutions while streamlining workflow, enabling users to work smarter rather than harder. Every day, the Moody’s Analytics CRE team is working to make Catylist more powerful by adding new insights and research, while the tool itself grows more robust thanks to valuable partnerships with brokers feeding information into it as they use it to do their job. Catylist and the powerful insights Moody’s Analytics provides via the platform are already indispensable to CRE professionals. Just ask one of the many brokers who already use it every day.