TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The Alabama Real Estate Research and Education Center and Litho Publishing Co. of Birmingham have embarked on a joint project designed to establish a database for information on commercial properties in the state’s major metropolitan areas.
The Center is a state-of-the-art comprehensive research and education facility designed to support Alabama’s professional real estate community and the state’s overall economic development efforts. It is housed within the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration at The University of Alabama.
“The relationship with the Alabama Real Estate Research and Education Center will provide a win-win-win opportunity in our view,” said Jim Andrews, president of Litho Publishing Co. “It will benefit our clients by making available to them information that will improve their ability to make investment decisions about highest and best use as well as strategic decisions involving their assets.”
Dr. Leonard V. Zumpano, the Center’s executive director, said, “one of the principal factors limiting economic development in Alabama is that the data needed to evaluate real estate investment and development opportunities is often unavailable, costly, or very time consuming to obtain. Combining the real estate data regularly being collected by Litho Publishing with the data generated by the Research Center will enable the Center to provide a much more comprehensive, accurate, and useful economic data base to support additional real estate development within the state.”
The Alabama Real Estate Research and Education Center was established in 1996 and is funded, in part, by the Alabama Real Estate Commission. The Center publishes the Monthly Housing Statistics Report and the quarterly Alabama Housing Affordability Index, in addition to professional real estate education texts and real estate-related research reports. The Center also serves as a clearinghouse and depository for real estate-related data.
Using the latest geographic information systems technology, the Center can take economic, demographic, and real estate data and integrate this information into detailed, multi-layered spatial maps and reports that can be used in the development of feasibility studies, market area analyses, and industrial location and site selection proposals.
Litho Publishing Co. publishes the Commercial Property Directory of Alabama. The Directory contains detailed information on warehouse, office, and retail properties located throughout the state.
Through the joint project, the Commercial Property Directory of Alabama will gain from periodically published “mini studies” and statistical reports providing broad overviews of market conditions and activity, Andrews said. Since 1986, Andrews has been involved in publishing commercial real estate data, including multifamily, office, retail, industrial and commercial sites.
“In 1997 we decided to take the Commercial Property Directory project statewide,” Andrews said. “We had been publishing data books in Huntsville, Mobile and Birmingham independently prior to this.” The first edition of the publication covering the entire state was issued in February 1998.
Contact
Bill Gerdes, UA Business Writer, 205/348-8318
Source
Dr. Leonard Zumpano, professor of finance, chair of real estate, and director, Alabama Real Estate Research and Education Center, 205/348-8988