CHICAGO—NORC at the University of Chicago has decided to use its 75 years of experience in social science research to benefit the world of commercial real estate. NORC officials say that their new subscription-based service, called ForeGround, will provide forecasts and highly personalized strategic advice to researchers with REITs, public pension funds and other institutional investors that will help make sense of the huge volumes of data now available on many commercial sectors.

“We have a team of veteran researchers, each with many years of experience,” Jon Southard, chief economist of ForeGround and vice president of the new Commercial Real Estate Economics group at NORC, tells GlobeSt.com. “And they are accustomed to building relationships with other members of the research community.”

Through the hub ForeGroundresearch.org, subscribers will have access not only to forecasts and research on dozens of US metropolitan areas, but also one-on-one consultations which could touch on overall economic trends, new investment opportunities, or even how local market conditions will affect an individual development project. Therefore, rather than simply providing researchers with another stream of data, ForeGround will leverage the power of an online research community and “provide the opportunity to have conversations,” says Southard.