Why Portland’s Real Estate Market is Better than Shanghai’s

There are thousands of people eager to work as commercial real estate brokers in Shanghai. With the city being the financial hub of China’s booming market, helping companies lease, buy or sell real estate looks interesting to a lot of people.

But why would anyone want to work in Shanghai’s commercial real estate industry when the they can’t get the basic information necessary to do their job?

The information I’m talking about is real estate market information. Meaningful real estate market information, and not just rumours passed on by friends. To provide meaningful service to their customers, brokers need to know what’s going on in the market, and the Shanghai market is far too big to be covered effectively by a rumour mill.

In surfing the web this week, I came across this daily column in a business newspaper from Portland, Oregon, which features details of deals submitted by brokers about who is buying or selling what in the market and for how much money.

If Portland, Oregon can have daily deals, then what is wrong with Shanghai?

You could say that there are concerns over privacy. But all sales and leases have to be reported to the government in China, and at that point are officially public information.

You could say that brokers don’t like to share, and it would be true. But brokers do like to brag, and what better way of bragging than seeing your name in the newspaper next to a major transaction?

You could even say that this information is already available in some cases. But those cases are only for public companies which are required to announce the information publicly. If it’s already been publicly announced, then I don’t need a broker.

I’m sure that every broker working at an agency or independently keeps their own spreadsheet of real estate deals that they know about.

However, a spreadsheet fed by rumours and what facts can be gleaned from the broker’s own deal or those of his or her coworkers is not a powerful tool, and does not provide top quality service to the client.

So maybe the answer to why Shanghai doesn’t have better sharing of real estate information is that clients aren’t demanding better service?

You tell me.