Our update policy can be described as follows:
A question for the founders of USRetailCenters.com:
Your competitors in this space have teams of real estate people on the ground actually visiting shopping centers and talking with owners about current and potential retailers. Is your data actually better than the information collected from being there?
The short answer is "Yes and No --- depending on your needs." While the web is a live, interactive media that brings together people, places and information almost instantly, there are limits to what can be found online.
If your need is for comprehensive coverage of retail activity in the US --- all centers, large and small --- and limited information about these centers (such as address, GLA, center type and retailers) then, our data is by far the best. Our centers cover every retail area, large and small.
If, on the other hand you need details on the centers (such as tenant history and requirements, leasing history, available property, etc.) that depend on having a field staff in regular contact with the center operators then, other companies do a much better job of providing this information.
Our current database of centers and retail areas is "good" by our standards but far from perfect. We know that as retailers open or close in retail areas or new centers come online, there are often gaps in the knowledge that are difficult to spot online or physically. We still find redundancies in our data and missing center locations or retail locations --- which we work continuously to correct. However, the key question here is where you place your bets for the future. If you are collecting these data physically or with surveys of center owners, there are limits on how often you can visit or survey with a finite number of staff and what information an individual knows about the center or retail area. Working through the Internet space, however, we have thousands of smart agents gathering data by monitoring millions of connections that, over time, will only grow smarter and more complete. We also link our data to Experian's National Business Database of 20,000,000 commercial locations both to provide verification and to locate gaps.