globalview99

Slow-Playing LoopNet For Now

I'm sure someone once said that ebay would be toast in a couple years.

The fact of the matter is that commercial real estate is different than residential RE in that the comm'l RE buyers and sellers are mostly professional who have a high level knowledge of what they're looking for and negotiating transactions, and the brokers are far less important in the process. An internet marketplace for comm'l RE is as natural a niche as Amazon in the book business. The above posters are probably luddites pooh poohing technology that they perceive to be threatening their job.

LOOP is stepping up and competing with CoStar, and if you compare their business models its like GOOG vs. AOL ten years ago.

Chris raises very good points and some will prove to be true like you can't maintain a ridiculous growth rate. But others are misleading like higher churn rate. When you raise prices, you're definitely going to lose more customers but if total revenues increase significantly and the churn rate increases marginally that's a trade-off any businessman will accept. The bottom line is hard numbers; much of the above data is out of context without bottom line hard numbers which we'll soon see. In the meantime, the stock at current levels is a good but risky buy mainly due to whether the economy goes into recession and not the residential fallout. Right now the odds are plus or minus 50% depending on the crystal ball reader.

Stay tuned and don't panic. Remember the greatest fortunes are won during times of crisis when people do irrational things enmasse.