November was a month of significant accomplishments for leasing and asset management software firm VTS. Not only did it add Canadian real estate owner and manager Artis REIT (AX-UN-T) to its fold, the New-York based firm also announced its VTS marketplace.

The addition of Artis brings another 24 million square feet of leasable space onto the VTS platform – which already services more than nine billion square feet of assets.

“VTS will enable Artis’ teams to make faster and more informed leasing decisions that drive performance across its significant portfolio,” said Nick Romito, CEO and co-founder of VTS, in a release. “We couldn’t be more excited to work with the Artis team as they transform their approach to leasing and asset management and completely modernize their organization.”

Already popular in the U.S.

The VTS leasing and asset management platform is already being utilized to manage almost one-third of office buildings in the United States. VTS says it has a user base exceeding 34,000.

“What attracted us most to VTS is the ability to gain real-time transparency across our portfolio, which will allow us to understand our exact occupancy and vacancy rates, and pinpoint where we need to focus our leasing efforts,” said Jim Green, CFO of Artis REIT, in the release. “By managing our end-to-end leasing process on VTS, our teams can make more strategic decisions and close deals faster.”

Winnipeg-headquartered Artis owns about 10 million square feet of office, 10 million square feet of industrial, and four million square feet of retail space across Canada and in select U.S. markets.

The software will enable Artis to modernize and standardize portfolio operations, give it increased visibility into occupancy and availabilities, and integrate into Artis’ accounting system.

VTS marketplace update

The VTS marketplace will provide the infrastructure for landlords, agency brokers, tenant reps, and tenants to lease online.

Agency brokers and landlords using the VTS platform and the VTS marketplace will be able to run the entire leasing process online, using real-time market data to price available space and lease negotiations. Tenant reps can search for space both on the market, as well as off-market via “future supply” data.

“The VTS marketplace is the culmination of the VTS vision to transform commercial real estate, making every player in the ecosystem – landlords, agency brokers, tenant reps, and tenants – more efficient,” said Romito in a prepared statement. He said there are more than 500,000 active deals in VTS, and more than 500 million square feet of leases were executed in the platform during the past year.

“Now, the VTS marketplace allows us to provide every player with the infrastructure to complete the full deal cycle for deals of all sizes, streamlining a process that has for decades been highly inefficient and expensive for everyone involved.”

VTS marketplace features

Thus far, landlords have had to separate the marketing of space from the process of managing a tenant through their pipeline and executing a lease. VTS marketplace automates and streamlines the end-to-end marketing, leasing, and transaction for an available space.

VTS marketplace will include the ability to:

– Instantly publish available spaces, current or future;
– Dynamically price inventory based on real-time market data;.
– Provide marketing collateral including floor plans, images, videos, and space details to interested tenants or tenant reps;
– Easily field inquiries, tours, and proposals that automatically input as deals on the VTS platform;
– Leverage VTS MarketView benchmarks and analytics to make decisions based on market trends;
– Centralize communication and negotiate in VTS;
– Approve, sign, transact, and store leases in VTS.

“VTS marketplace will be the first of its kind bringing tenants and tenant rep brokers into an ecosystem that is directly powered by landlords and their agency teams,” said Ryan Masiello, co-founder and chief strategy officer of VTS.

“The tenant rep broker is a stakeholder that is key to the market’s evolution — bringing them specifically into the fold has always been core to our vision.”

Advantageous for tenant rep brokers

Tenant rep brokers will be able to discover, plan, select, negotiate, and transact on spaces that best fit the needs of their tenants. This will include the abilities to:

– Access available spaces from over nine billion square feet of office, retail, and industrial properties;
– Discover soon-to-be-available spaces that meet their criteria;
– Connect with agency brokers and owners to quickly tour and view spaces, allowing tenants to find their ideal space and move in according to their target timeline;
– Centralize communication and negotiate directly in VTS;
– Save time and effort by transacting the lease online.