When Ron Brock began forming the business idea that would ultimately become Pierce-Eislen, a data research firm focused on the commercial apartment industry, online databases and the Internet were still in the incubation stages. Fast forward a couple of decades, and Brock’s company, Pierce-Eislen (acquired in 2013 by Yardi Systems) is the leading provider of performance information about apartment communities. Nationwide intelligence on markets, developments, rents, occupancy and more can all be gleaned from the company’s reports. They are sought out by lenders, investors, developers, multifamily managers and economists as accurate indicators of economic trend and performance. With more than four decades now in the apartment industry, working as a developer, broker and business leader, Brock has tremendous perspective on how much the industry has changed. And as he observed in a recent interview, the rate of that change seems to be speeding up lately. “It wasn’t very long ago that the real estate industry was extremely unsophisticated. Even when we formed Pierce-Eislen, it was that way. You get the Millennials coming along, and they expect to be able to pull up some data on the Internet and do their work,” Brock said. Advancement in the warehousing and analysis of business intelligence, he said, has been beneficial to Pierce-Eislen as the company strives to provide bigger and better reports. “Until recently, we provided what has happened and what’s happening currently. We didn’t look forward. Now, we have a new system that has a forward look that we’ll be introducing sometime in the not too distant future.”  Nationwide market intelligence Pierce-Eislen’s rent surveys target 60 major apartment markets around the country. A full market survey, comprising all properties in the given market of 50 units or more, is conducted three times a year. A smaller...

Yardi has acquired Pierce-Eislen, a real estate research and reporting firm focusing on the multi-family industry. The merger announcement was made July 3. Based in Scottsdale, Ariz., Pierce-Eislen is an online, subscription-based technology company providing up-to-the-minute data to the commercial multifamily housing industry. “This union will help us bring the industry’s most complete and fully bundled information source to a national audience,” said Pierce-Eislen founder Ronald Brock Sr. Read the rest of the press release announcing the acquisition at...