Patriots in the Super Bowl usually means good news for Boston sellers

This column by broker and analyst David Bates originally appeared on Curbed Boston in February 2015. We're re-running it because of the Patriots' pending appearance in Super Bowl LI.

The year the Patriots won their first Super Bowl, 2002, reports from the region's multiple-listings service show that there were 36 percent more Boston condo sales and the city's median condo sales price went up 23 percent compare with 2001. For real estate, that's a championship year!

The year the Pats won their second Super Bowl, 2004, MLS reports show a 48 percent increase in Boston condo sales and a 10 percent appreciation in the median sales price. And the year the Pats defeated the Philadelphia Eagles to win their third Super Bowl, 2005, was a year that had more Boston MLS listed condo sales (4,687) than any year before or since.

Patriot championships seemed to go hand-in-hand with banner years for the Hub condo market.

When the Pats lost to the Giants in the Super Bowl in 2008, the local market was good enough for Tom Brady to sell his condo at 314 Commonwealth Avenue for $5.285 million shortly thereafter. By mid-year, Boston median condo sale prices were up 3 percent.

But, on Sept. 7, 2008, something more unthinkable than the David Tyree catch happened: In the opening game against the Buffalo Bills, Brady sustained a season-ending injury. Almost immediately afterward, as if there was a direct correlation, the financial markets collapsed and the local real estate market sank, too.

The Pats failed to make the playoffs in 2009; got blown out at home by the Ravens in 2010; and lost to the hated Jets in 2011. Naturally, folks voiced their doubts about Hub real estate as well ... But, when the Patriots returned to the Super Bowl in February 2012, those doubts went away, provoking Hub condo sales in 2012 to shoot up 24 percent and the city's median sales price to go up 8 percent.

Tom Brady seemingly immediately identified the newfound optimism for the Hub condo market, and sold his Back Bay penthouse for $9.2 million.

With the acquisition of superstar cornerback Darrelle Revis in 2014, there was incredible optimism about the Patriots' Super Bowl chances. Not surprisingly, Hub real estate developers started announcing and breaking ground on projects of unprecedented size and scope.

And now that the Lombardi Trophy has returned to the City of Champions, it quite possibly means another banner year for Hub condo sales.

How to persuade without manipulating

Bob BurgContributing WriterSuccessful sales professionals persuade. They don’t manipulate.

I’m often asked to explain the difference between the two. Actually, it tends to take more the form of a challenge, as in, “Aren't persuasion and manipulation the same thing?”

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And, it’s a good, legitimate question. After all, in both cases you are attempting to elicit an individual or group to think or do something they would not presumably think or do without your influence.

Persuasion and manipulation are — in a sense — cousins (i.e., good cousin and evil cousin). After all, both are based on certain principles of human nature, human action and interaction.

Good persuaders and good manipulators understand those principles and know how to effectively use them. That’s why there is perhaps nothing more dangerous than a bad person with good people skills.

Yes, the principles are similar; often even the same. In actuality, however, the results are as different as night and day. The big difference is the intent. In his magnificent 1986 book, The Art of Talking so That People Will Listen, Dr. Paul Swets provided an outstanding explanation regarding both intent and outcome. He wrote:

“Manipulation aims at control, not cooperation. It results in a win/lose situation. It does not consider the good of the other party. Persuasion is just the opposite. In contrast to the manipulator, the persuader seeks to enhance the self-esteem of the other party. The result is that people respond better because they are treated as responsible, self-directing individuals.”

Different intentions, different results

The persuader aims to serve; the manipulator, to hurt. Or, if not necessarily intending to hurt, certainly not caring if that occurs. The manipulator is simply so focused on him or herself and his or her own self-interest that — like any other totally self-serving organism — they do only what they feel is for their own benefit and, if someone must suffer as a result, then so be it.

What they don’t realize is that not only is this not good life practice — it’s not good business practice.

A manipulator can have employees, but never a team.

She can have customers, but rarely one that will be long-lasting and a source of referrals. And, once discovered, the manipulator’s customer-base tends to crumble like a stale cookie.

He can have friends and family, but rarely are these relationships fulfilling and happy.

Yes, both persuaders and manipulators know the how and why of human motivation. And, both use their knowledge to cause the action they desire a person to take. However, the crucial difference between the two is that while manipulators use that knowledge to their advantage only, the persuader uses it to the other person’s advantage.

Ultimately, your influence and ability to persuade is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.

CoStar files suit against Xceligent, its biggest rival

Data company previously filed suits targeting competitors RealMassive, CompStak and LoopNet

December 13, 2016 03:10PM
By Konrad Putzier

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UPDATED, Dec. 13, 6:59 p.m.: Commercial real estate data company CoStar Group is suing its biggest rival Xceligent for copyright infringement, in a near mirror image of its previous lawsuits against data startups RealMassive, LoopNet and against users of CompStak.

In a complaint filed Tuesday in Kansas City, Missouri federal court, CoStar accused Xceligent of “piracy” and “copyright infringement on an industrial scale,” alleging that Xceligent’s researchers regularly trawl CoStar’s and LoopNet’s (now a CoStar subsidiary) databases to steal property data and images. The firm seeks millions of dollars in damages and injunctive relief to prevent the alleged copyright infringement from happening again.

Xceligent immediately dismissed the charges in a statement, accusing CoStar of anti-competitive behavior. “The lawsuit fits with a pattern of action by CoStar of filing lawsuits against its competitors to protect its dominant market position in commercial real estate research in the United States,” Xceligent’s CEO Doug Curry said in a statement. “In fact, in August 2012, the Federal Trade Commission issued an Order restraining CoStar from engaging in certain activities, which the Federal Trade Commission determined to be anti-competitive in nature.”

Competitors have long accused CoStar of using lawsuits as a weapon to weaken rivals. CoStar claims it spends a lot of capital gathering its data, and insists that rivals are trying to mooch off its hard work.

In 2014, the company sued unnamed users of leasing comp database CompStak for copyright infringement, and last year it sued Texas-based online marketplace RealMassive. It also filed several lawsuits against the online leasing marketplace LoopNet, before acquiring the company for $860 million in 2012.

The latest lawsuit comes just as Xceligent — which sources say is the only company seriously attempting to offer a product similar to CoStar — is preparing to launch in New York City, taking on the behemoth in its most important market. Both CoStar and Xceligent offer online databases with commercial property and leasing information, along with separate online leasing marketplaces (LoopNet and commercialsearch.com). And both companies use armies of researchers who call landlords and brokers to compile their databases.

CoStar claims that hundreds of Xceligent employees created over 3,000 CoStar accounts to steal data and images. Xceligent, an open-source platform, counters that its “data centers operate to ensure protection of intellectual property rights and have controls in place to ensure we publish data that we have collected within the scope of those rights.”

Washington, D.C.-based CoStar is a public company with a current market cap of $6.3 billion. Xceligent, meanwhile, with 1,300 employees as of August, is owned by DMGI, the investment arm of Britain’s Daily Mail Group.

The Federal Trade Commission helped arrange DMGI’s acquisition of Xceligent in 2012 as part of a settlement agreement approving CoStar’s LoopNet acquisition. Xceligent had been a LoopNet subsidiary, but was spun off as a condition for the merger’s approval. “By maintaining Xceligent as an independent competitor and ensuring Xceligent’s ability to grow and expand, the FTC’s settlement order will foster continued competition in these markets,” Richard Feinstein, the head of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition at the time, said in a 2012 statement.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly dated CoStar’s lawsuits against CompStak users and RealMassive.