COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE TRADE GROUP ‘AIR’ ADDRESSES ‘CRYING NEED’ FOR PROPERTY DATA TO ASIAN COMMUNITY

Substantial Future Space Requirement Cited

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE TRADE GROUP ‘AIR’ ADDRESSES ‘CRYING NEED’ FOR PROPERTY DATA TO ASIAN COMMUNITY

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – Veteran Southland Asian commercial real estate professionals agree that as the influence of the community soars in that sector, there’s a “crying need” for reliable property data.

In response to that need, the Los Angeles-based AIR Commercial Real Estate Association is reaching out to “bridge the gap” between the mainstream real estate and Asian realty sectors. AIR is a 50-year-old non-profit group representing some 95 percent of the commercial brokers in the five-county Metro L.A. region.

Facilitating the gap bridging was AIR’s recent networking and information session in City of Industry that attracted over 70 members of the Asian real estate community, including brokers, bankers, appraisers and mortgage bankers.

“The meeting was a huge success because it attracted a diverse group of over twice the number we expected. And while we targeted brokers, we discovered that lenders, appraisers and related real estate professionals were also very interested in AIR’s services, including its reliable property data,” said AIR member John Hsu, principal of STC Management of Whittier, an event host.

Co-host Joe Lin, principal and senior vice president of Lee & Associates-Ontario and a member of AIR’s board of directors, echoed Hsu’s enthusiasm.

“This was a pioneering move by the AIR and the Asian community because it’s the first time such a meaningful outreach to this community has been achieved. This is vital because the influence of the Asian community on the export-import business will require a substantial amount of space in the future,” Lin said.

Lin emphasized that in the past, Asians have typically relied on friends and relatives to secure market knowledge. “Too often the sources of real estate data for Asians was word of mouth and unreliable. So, there is a crying need for accurate data. Now Asians seeking real estate realize that there is a non-profit, respected organization like AIR that offers reliable market data resources to Asians and which is not out to pick their pockets. AIR is able to provide the data and the Asian real estate professionals to carry that information to their Asian clients,” Lin said.

Addressing the Asian gathering, Tim Hayes, executive director of AIR, commented: “This meeting represents AIR’s entree into the substantial Asian real estate community. It was our goal to reach out and build relationships with this community. To do so, we described several of AIR’s services to the group, including our CDX property data system, and our over 50 commercial real estate forms which have long been the industry standard.”

About AIR Commercial Real Estate Association

The nation’s largest organization of its kind, AIR is a non-profit corporation formed in l960 for the purpose of fostering knowledge, integrity and efficiency in the field of industrial and commercial real estate brokerage. More than 1750 real estate professionals in over 400 firms located in the eight-county Southern California area, representing approximately 95 percent of the brokerage community, actively participate in AIR.

Among its many programs and services, AIR provides specialized standard industrial/commercial lease forms and purchase order forms for industrial and office real estate, and CDX, its Internet-based system that provides access to multiple sources of property data on every building in a given market, considered the ultimate source for offering complete facilities for cooperative marketing of industrial and office properties. AIR is headquartered in downtown Los Angeles, and also has an office in the City of Orange in Orange County.