ICIWorld.net, Inc.

Our Story

In the 1980's I joined the Central Canada CCIM Chapter. What is a chapter?

CCIM stands for Certified Commercial Investment Member. It is a professional designation provided by the CCIM Institute which is a division of the National Association of Realtors.

What is a CCIM?

One function of the chapter is networking.

That is you develop good business relationships with others in the chapter and then network what we call Haves and Wants.

A "Have" is an opportunity that you know about whether it is listed or not and it can be many things. For instance:

it could be an owner who wants to sell his property;
it could be an owner who has listed his property with you;
it could be mortgage money available;
it could be an equity in a property where the owner is willing to trade for something else;
it could be a developer who has a development site;
it could be a developer who has space for lease or coming available in the future;
it could be another realtor who has told you about a property available and is willing to cooperate;
it could be an owner who has said, "bring me in an offer and I will pay you a commission, but I do not want to list the property on MLS."
it could be an owner who has given you an exclusive right to sell but on a confidential basis. ie: advertise the opportunity but not the exact address;
etc.

A "Want":

usually it is what a buyer is looking for;
it is the acquisition criteria of buyers;
it is the buying criteria of buyers;
it is what tenants of space are looking for;
it can be the kind of financing that someone is looking for;
etc.

The chapter presented incredible opportunities with the networking of Haves and Wants by the members.

Addresses and exact locations of properties were not divulged until suitable arrangements for compensation were made, proper listing agreements put in place to cover a showing, etc.

Membership of the chapter is made up of 65% real estate brokers and salespeople, and other real estate professionals, buyers and sellers, corporate real estate professionals, affiliated professionals bankers, mortgage brokers, people who supply services to the industry, lawyers, environmental companies, appraisers, and much much more.

One learned very early that one piece of information can make one a lot of money.

I noticed early on that licensed real estate salespeople were in a unique position in the marketplace to learn about all kinds of Haves and Wants and were in the best organized position to collect this data as an industry and make it available to the public as a service. If you cut out the real estate broker you cut out the incentive for him/her to spend thousands of hours working this kind of information for the benefit of the public.

This becomes a win win situation for the public and real estate salespeople because more information now becomes available with more choices to benefit a buyer and greater marketing exposure to obtain the highest and best price and terms on behalf of a seller.

Brokers would stand up in marketing sessions and say I have a buyer for an apartment building, I have a shopping center, etc.

We would write this information down feverishly, missing writing fast enough because what happens if you missed writing something down and two weeks from now you met a buyer who wanted a shopping center? Who was it that had it?

So in the early 1990's I discovered with the advent of computers I discovered on line Bulletin Board Systems. Quickbbs was such a service that we built and starting having salespeople call up using a telephone line and placing Haves and Wants. One broker ending up finding a string of thirteen shopping centers in California. It became an adrenalin rush when you heard about such connections and deals being done all because of computer technology that never would have happened if it wasn't for our service. In those days it was called the Commercial Investment Bulletin Board System. CIBBS.

Then we heard about the Internet coming in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Something of an information revolution. It must be applied to benefit the real estate industry world wide but how?

Along the way I had become a real estate salesperson in 1972 and broker in 1994, managing offices, then starting up a franchise Realty World. Become President of the Junior Chamber of Commerce learning business leadership principles along the way, reading books Dale Carnegie, Napolean Hill, etc. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe he will achieve."

I looked for a programmer who could get my service onto the Internet for me and was fortunate to find one. So from the bulletin board system service we simply copied the concepts and ran the same thing on the Internet. In 1994 if you searched "commercial real estate" there were 14 responses world wide in Alta Vista the big search engine of the day.

Today in google 'investment real estate" "commercial real estate" there are more than 100,000,000 and ICIWorld is on the first page. We certainly have learned a lot. Yet sometimes the more you learn the more you find out you don't know.

But one thing was certain, the ones who starting using the service started doing exceptional deals. They made exceptional connections. This became our inspiration. They said Gary "keep building the service, its working great."

One of the mindsets of the Internet is that it allows you to network world wide for all kinds of things not just real estate and to do it cheaply, economically. How else can one converse around the world and not cost money? It was incredible and still is.

So the greatest marketing medium known to man is here and working and in the 1990's no one knew how to use let alone have the expensive equipment and computers and know how to make it all work. We were before our time. Oops, slow growth that we never planned on. It was tough on our family particularly when as a top salesperson I averaged one end a week selling new homes to be built and resales and some commercial and investment real estate. Most of us in real estate love serving people successfully.

Dale Carnegie said, build a good service and they will come.

And so it is today, the service continues to grow.

The concept of networking information is working just as I had read in Bill Gates book called "@ the speed of thought." If you can think of something and write it down, and place it on the Internet you can find others of a like minded nature to get together with and perhaps do business.

And so today you will see recorded among the most real estate deals that ICIWorld had a small but absolutely vital role to help be successfully. One small part - to help the one phone call that connected the right people at the right time, yet absolutely vital role to present a whole fleet of opportunities so that that one choice might be made. See testimonials.

Of course the Internet service had to have a solid platform on the Internet. One that had the ability to handle literally all of the Haves and Wants in the world today. Our service is designed to grow all along the way to handle the world.

A blip occurred in December 2010. We also distribute EMails of listings to any and everyone who wants to receive them. As far as we are concerned it is like the classified ads of a newspaper. Anyone can read a newspaper. Anyone can read the classified ads. ICIWorld is more like classified ads in a newspaper in terms of information rather than a real estate board type service. Our ads link to actual listings of members. We drive traffic to members web sites and their listings.

The latest service that the industry is just learning about is a link that can be placed on a members web site that displays thousands of Haves and Wants all in a way that that member gets the leads.

It becomes inevitable now that everyone does business because when someone visits a members web site, there are 15,000 listing choices all in a way that that member gets the call. The only reason why a member will not do business is if they have no traffic going to their web site or a material defect in their membership.

It is a win win situation for the member and the public. Greater exposure of their properties because now their properties are on 1,000 brokers web sites instead of just one web site. This is 1,000 portals to the Internet which provides greater exposure.

And the connections and success stories just continue to roll in. It does not matter where in the world you are located, connections happen for every member when worked properly.

New technology today allows us to demonstrate things on a members computer and talk to them, no matter where in the world they are located. We call it a Daily Webinar Workshop.

Once a member has things working properly most all things now work automatically updating themselves 50-100 new listings a day and the member does not have to do hardly anything. Everything works 24 hours per day 7 days per week. Everything is working as smooth as a babies bum.

I have a personal family but my business family is other licensed real estate brokers and salespeople all over the world.

Any questions please do not hesitate to contact the writer.

Sincerely

Gary Nusca, CCIM
ICIWorld.net, Inc.
416-214-4875