Customer Reviews

The Site Book : A Field Guide to Commercial Real Estate Evaluation (Mesa Professional Development Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is great for everyone from the beginner to the seasoned sales forecaster.

I browse it every now and again to remind myself that there are fundamentals to this business, and we know how costly veering from those can be.

It's a fast read, and I highly recommend it to those doing site selection.

This book analyzes the the factors that go into choosing a good site for a commercial venture.

This alone would have been enough to earn 5 stars. The book goes on to present a system for rating potential sites that uses the factors explained in previous chapters. You can customize the process by changing the importance each factor carries.

A software package is offered for sale that provides templates and performs calculations. However, if you are handy with Excel, you should be able to recreate the template/calculations within a few hours.

This excellent book promises to be a guide to choosing commercial real estate. It delivers, in spades, on that promise.

This book was referred to me by a co-worker (who happened to be an expert in real estate). Thanks!! I only wish I'd stumbled upon it years earlier.

After struggling with a homegrown spreadsheet modeling approach in my first retail business, this book brought together all the missing pieces in a way that made perfect sense. It gave me a framework to account for the qualitative site feature data that is so important, yet so difficult to deal with. It became my roadmap for site selection.

The logical model outlined in this book comes to life through Fenker's humorous examples of tips & traps.

If your business depends on good sites, you must read this book!

This is a good, pratical book- although it only focuses on retail development. No mention of office, multifamily, industrial, etc. Still worth it though.

This book is a great resource for even the most seasoned real estate professionals. It is refreshing to see a scientific approach to site selection that successfully integrates the art of real estate qualitative analysis.

This book is one of a kind. Some businesses rely on location more than others. I am acquainted with some individuals who sell high-end chocolate for a company called Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. The major determinant of their success was the site selection, but I don't think people realize how important it is in retail, until their business fails mainly because of a poor location. This book is great because it helps you pick the right location based on various factors. It is easy to change the site before you build anything. Once you put $500,000 into it, then you are kind of stuck. Individuals who will find this book helpful are developers, brokers, appraisers, and lenders.

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

The book is a also complete guide about evaluation site. May be the index could be better if it would have a clear reference to the clasic topics: supply and demand.

The way for define trade areas is not the most complex that exist. The book shows like standar distances 1 mile, 1-3 miles and 3-5 miles from demand to the consumer. But that distance perhaps is not good for cities where automobile is not the most common vehicle. The book not speak about not cirlce trade areas like poligon trade areas or Huff areas.

The book is a very good guide for people that have not interest in teorical and formal quantitative aspects of location.

The statement in another's review and in the content of the book:
"A software package is offered for sale that provides templates and performs calculations..." is not true. Tangram Corporation who used to sell the "model" no longer exists and I couldn't find the file anywhere when I searched for it online. The other reviewer's statement: "However, if you are handy with Excel, you should be able to recreate the template/calculations within a few hours. " may be true, but what is your time worth? If the model is worth re-creating, great!, but in this digital age, a web address for a download in "the next edition" would be really helpful. The book is a little dated but OK for a quick survey for the real estate professional (read broker or real estate manager, not necessarily research professional) who wants a quick list of top-of-mind location concepts.

From an investor's viewpoint the book offers very little. At most you pickup some buzz words when marketing property. Very small book and can easily be read in one evening. There's a big void for this information and I haven't been able to find any published books to help me. If you know of any excellent books, please let me know by commenting.

The book discusses a lot of terminology, but doesn't tell you how to do your own demorgraphic reports and give you any templates on how to prepare facts sheets that for marketing your property.