As the President of Ten-X, the largest online commercial real estate (CRE) exchange, Steve Jacobs has a front row seat to the rapidly changing CRE technology market. An industry veteran, he has become an evangelist for opportunities being created in CRE’s growing digital arena. We sat down with Jacobs to learn more about the online revolution that’s looking to shift the “business as usual” mentality for investors, sellers and brokers alike.

How has the commercial real estate industry embraced new technology across the past 2-3 years, and how has that impacted the CRE transaction process?

To be honest, there’s still a hesitation to deviate from the traditional way of transacting real estate and adopting the technology. Earlier in my career, I was on the owner’s side of the CRE industry and controlled billions of dollars of assets. Back then, it could take six to seven months to get a transaction done. When I was introduced to Ten-X a decade ago, I thought “Wow, this is the future.” Partnering with brokers and using various online technology and tools, Ten-X has been able to cut the transaction timeline in half with sellers closing much quicker and brokers getting paid much faster. The platform creates transparency, an even playing field for buyers, and a much faster option for the broker and the seller to work with. Our technology includes our global marketing suite, enabling us to connect with international buyers in addition to national buyers. This type of online platform also gives everyone involved more certainty of “close.” We hold the auction events and whomever wins, they’re signing the purchase and sale contract that day. There’s no negotiating or retrading. Once a contract is signed and a 10% hard money deposit is exchanged, then you close in 30 days or less, typically.

At its core, Ten-X is an online auction for buying and selling CRE. Why have auctions gotten a bad reputation in this industry, and how is Ten-X changing that perception?

So the word auction is something I’ve tried to get away from—but it’s what we do. Ten-X is an auction platform. We provide an optimized tactic for sales. Buying and selling CRE should be as easy as buying stocks. When you buy stock, you’re underwriting the company. And before you make that investment decision, you do your due diligence on that company, most likely online. It should be the same way for real estate. Both buyers and sellers should have transparency and access to make decisions quickly. When that happens, the transaction happens twice as fast. It fascinates me that auctioning art, jewelry and classic cars is considered exclusive yet auctioning CRE is considered negative; the asset is bad, distressed, risky, when it may be a perfectly solid investment, but the ownership may have been compromised. So the industry needs to get away from the negativity around the word auction for real estate, right? Although we started Ten-X in 2010 during the Great Recession, this platform isn’t about distressed sales—that’s a total misconception. More and more investors and sellers are going online because it gives them farther reach. We just partnered with a top brokerage firm to successfully transact a shopping center on Long Island—closed for $57 million. Not a distressed sale. They worked with us because they knew our platform could really bring people in.

You spoke earlier about access to information. How does Ten-X give investors, brokers and sellers the insights and exposure they need to make the right decisions?

When trading real estate, access to data is everything. Ten-X, now being part of the CoStar Group (a leading provider of CRE data), is so important. Say an investor is looking to buy a building in Salt Lake City. They’re going to need to know what other properties in that area have traded for. They’ll want to know what the comparable rents are, what else is going on in that area, even the distance to drive to certain landmarks. They want all that data, and as Ten-X integrates with CoStar, we are starting to provide best-in-class data to our customers. When we take the properties live on Ten-X and give them diamond status on LoopNet, the most heavily trafficked CRE marketplace, with 10+ million views monthly, this allows the best exposure. So when I look at using a digital platform and choosing the right investment property, Ten-X has the trifecta, because we provide CoStar data and LoopNet exposure in our platform. It’s having an online repository of all the critical information and tools investors need to make smart decisions.

How does transacting CRE via an online platform provide transparency and opportunity for investors like they’ve never had before?

The issue of nontransparency in the offline world is eliminated with our digital platform. Say a property is being auctioned and there are nine buyers who register. Those nine buyers participate in the bidding process, and they have the opportunity to see what all the bids are and decide if they want to bid higher or not. If they decide to not raise their bids or walk away, they know where they stand. It makes the entire process fairer. For our buyers, we give them transparency, and they like that. For our sellers and brokers, we give them confidence that we brought a market valuation. So we keep everyone happy.