Oscre Unveils Industry Data Standards

SANTA CRUZ, CA-The Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate today has unveiled its first set of data standards, a milestone that its CEO describes as a “historic” step toward the day when everyone in the commercial real estate industry speaks the same data entry language. Andy Fuhrman, CEO of Oscre, tells GlobeSt.com that the Commercial Information Exchange standard introduced today is the first in a series of standards that will be introduced in the coming months and years by Oscre and its members.

The standards are designed to significantly reduce the cost, time and errors associated with current methods of exchanging commercial property listing information between sellers, brokers, listing exchanges and buyers. The standards released today, in turn, are part of a larger effort to create a universally accepted system for the exchange and transfer of information among the myriad types of buyers, sellers, users, service providers, government entities and others who gather and record commercial real estate information either regularly or from time to tome as part of their day-to-day businesses.

The standards that were released today are part of an effort that lasted more than two and a half years, Fuhrman points out. As he explains to GlobeSt.com, the reason behind Oscre’s formulating of the standards is that organizations and individuals operating in the commercial real estate world employ so many different approaches to recording the same information. Exchanging information can be a daunting task even between two companies operating in the same general area of commercial real estate, Fuhrman says.