Big data a big deal in commercial real estate, says CrediFi

And what’s more, said Ely Razin, CEO of CrediFi, which provides the first source of hard data about the industry, his Jerusalem-based start-up consists largely of immigrants from the US and other English-speaking countries,

“Israel is usually known for its strong tech skills, and as a big data company, we have our share of data geeks,” Razin told The Times of Israel. “But to make this work as an Israeli company, we needed a lot of people who were experts in the commercial real estate, and we were able to find them among Western immigrants to Israel.”

CrediFi is an idea that has long been needed, said Razin.

“The commercial real estate market is worth trillions, but until this year there has not been a central depository of objective information about buildings, investors, landowners, and other essential, basic information an investor needs to make a good deal. That kind of data has long been around for the stock market and other investment markets – why not for commercial real estate?”

Razin is very familiar with those other sources of data. A former top executive at Thompson Reuters, he was recruited two years ago to help develop CrediFi. “The idea was puzzling to me, because it was hard to imagine that there was no automated source of information about this market – but an extensive study we conducted indicated that that was indeed the case.”

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