Technology, patented technology at that, is helping the Des Moines office of JLL catch the stuff that can fall between the cracks in commercial real estate deals.

The program, recently patented by JLL, the global real estate and investment firm that opened an Iowa office in 2014 at 801 Grand Ave., is called Blackbird. It is, as Marcus Pitts, managing director in Des Moines, is likely to say, akin to Google Earth on steroids. Groundwork gives Blackbird its bulk.

For Pitts and his crew, Blackbird can prevent the awkward moment when a client on a site tour points to a property with a for-sale-by-owner sign and asks, “What’s the story with that property?”

“You have to know the answer,” Pitts said. He hasn’t always known the answer. With Blackbird at his fingertips, those answers can come with the click of the mouse and in many layers of data.

Pitts, Eric Land, senior analyst in the Des Moines office, and brokers Austin Hedstrom and Jeremy Spillman walked the Business Record through the program during a conference call with the Ames Chamber of Commerce. We should point out that the call included an industrial client that JLL was courting — and tapping for information — who asked to remain anonymous.

Blackbird’s focus is the industrial market, warehouse owners and users, distribution centers, manufacturing operations, even retail and office tenants looking for cheaper rents the sector offers.

Along with multifamily, it is the hottest draw for investors. In Greater Des Moines, an onslaught of new construction seems to whet the appetite for more. Hubbell Realty Co., Graham Construction Group and R&R Realty are major local builders. Ryan Cos. US Inc. and Opus Group, both from the Twin Cities, have local offices and industrial is a major component of their business.

As a brokerage, JLL “lives and breathes” industrial, Pitts said during the conference call. For Hedstrom in central Iowa and Spillman in eastern Iowa, it is their calling card.

With Blackbird, the calling card leaves an impression.

“I’m not aware of anybody who has something like that,” said John Hall, director of marketing for the Ames Chamber of Commerce and Ames Economic Development Commission and executive director of the Nevada Economic Development Council. “They are first to the table with it; others are going to have to catch up.”

The Ames Chamber and Economic Development Commission have some interest in the software’s potential. They are partners with Alliant Energy in marketing the 730-acre Prairie View Industrial Center along Lincoln Way on the east side of the city.

The project is among three that Alliant has launched with local economic development groups — the others are in Cedar Rapids and Ottumwa — to spur job creation by attracting large industrial users. The Ames Economic Development Commission is working to certify the full site as a “super park” through the state of Iowa’s certified site program.

During the conference call with JLL, Hall and crew in an Ames conference room shared a proprietary connection to Blackbird with the JLL crew in Des Moines. The view was of Prairie View and the data that was delivered through a series of drop-down windows revealed utilities, transportation routes, proximity to shippers. But that was readily available information. The key to Blackbird is tailoring the information to what a client wants to learn.

As the demonstration progressed, Land directed the program to properties scattered across the state. There was the basic data, but Land pointed out that development plans could be called to view, as well as land costs, lease rates, geographical features, zoning regulations, railroad and highway corridors, nearby businesses, possible competitors. Want to know the drive time from a site in Ames to St. Louis? Ask Blackbird.

“Eric can create an overlay from a site plan, show how it is parceled off because of waterways or natural features,” Pitts said. “Then we can show what is planned, how the building sits on the property. Many of the bigger users arrive with their in-house engineering in tow. We can do a complete site plan and overlay that.”

Dig a little deeper, and reveal the entire history of the property, including previous owners, sales, tenants, developments.

“It’s almost like an abstract, the history of each property from a commercial real estate standpoint,” Pitts said. “All the sales information, the lease information, the land information, from the sales price of the land, the sales price of the building, then if it flips again, then if it goes vacant; we can say historically this is where it’s been.”

Hall said he has seen similar technology used in the retail sector, but to his mind nothing like it exists for the industrial market.

“I think it’s a pretty unique tool,” he said.

In 2014, it was a tool that was unique to Pitts as JLL opened the Des Moines office. Blackbird was developed by the parent company and was in use in other offices around the country.

At the time, the Des Moines office tended to do property searches as one-off projects. Gather some information, present it to the client and, more than likely, forget about it and move on to the next deal. Either that or use the old-fashioned real estate tool of pitting one relationship against another. Connections and the gift of gab have resulted in successful careers for many brokers.

“We got into a couple of searches for large industrial users looking for 60 to 100 acres to put up a 600,000- to 1-million-square-foot distribution center in the state of Iowa,” Pitts said. “After about the first two times of doing that search repetitively, we started digging into Blackbird and realized we needed to get this information added so the next time a big user comes we can just update the platform and show them what’s available.”

Much of that information begins with a contact. If Spillman learns of a property in eastern Iowa, for example, the search for data begins. Public records help. Phone calls are made to local economic development groups to glean information the folks at JLL might not be aware of. Owners are contacted. The conversation can follow this line: “We know this about your property; tell us what we don’t know.”

The goal is to catalog every industrial property in the state along with a database that amounts to full biographies of those properties.

Pitts said that companies are demanding more data. If they don’t know already, they want to know everything from fuel costs to land prices and everything in between.

“In a nutshell, this is a visualization tool that can help people make decisions without leaving their office,” Land said.

During the conference call, Pitts emphasized that JLL was after accurate information. That was the first priority. If you want to do business with JLL, “we can have that conversation, too,” he told a potential client.

While looking at one company’s land holdings, Pitts remarked, “I’ve been in this business for 15 years and I had no idea they owned so much property.” When you’re compiling a catalog, that’s the kind of information you start with.

Still, Pitts is in commercial real estate; it’s a relationship business. When does data trump those connections?

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Pitts said. “It used to be in real estate that you would just compete on the ‘hey, here’s a relationship; hey, I can get you $3.95 a foot, this guy can get you $4.’ The reason that JLL has invested so much in data is that it’s another talking point. What JLL has done a good job of is to take all the information from transactions they have done over the years and funnelled that into a tangible conversation with users, whether that user is a landowner or a business owner or whoever it might be.”

And the data can provide a sort of institutional memory. Pitts pointed out that the office has been working on one deal for four years, with all of the particulars routed through Blackbird. 

“It’s all becoming technology; it’s all becoming data,” he said.

JLL creates venture fund to chase technology

JLL Spark is a year-old division of the commercial real estate firm that focuses on proptech, or technology that benefits the real estate industry. Earlier this month, it rolled out a plan to invest up to $100 million in companies that use technology to improve everything from real estate development and management to leasing and investing.

The JLL Spark Global Venture Fund also will help entrepreneurs and their companies by connecting them with JLL’s business lines and clients for insightful feedback and distribution of their products, according to a release.

The new fund will focus on seed and Series A investments, as well as select later stage rounds, with funding of a few hundred thousand dollars to several million dollars.

In addition to technology startups, the fund could be used for companies that are inventing new technology-enabled business models in traditional JLL service areas or those that will help expand its services to new client segments, according to the release.

JLL Spark is headed by co-CEOs who had plenty of experience in the startup and venture fund communities, but little in commercial real estate.

Among other things, co-CEOs Mihir Shah and Yishai Lerner co-founded Mob.ly, which they later sold to Groupon. They also have been angel investors and advisers to several startups, including Uber and Boom Supersonic.

Shah told TechCrunch that he became interested in commercial real estate while trying to buy some. “I was looking at the process and was thinking ‘Wow! That is not a modern process,’ ” he said.