C & W sells powerhouse research database.

To get out of the daily grind of updating leasing and sales availabilities, Cushman & Wakefield has sold its building data base to RealtyIQ.com, a data company and real estate information portal that was created by the space tracking firm, RE/Locate.

The acquisition of the C&W SiteSolutions data base covering 47 markets and 8.5 billion square feet of industrial and commercial space permits RealtyIQ.com to enter the nationwide market with a large presence and a current database. The agreement also provides the portal can hire any of the Cushman & Wakefield research staffers that decide to move to the dotcom world.

But if you think Cushman & Wakefield is turning away from its customers and will rely on third parties for information, listen up.

"We will maintain a research operation, and we will run our own statistics and forecasting," insisted Maria Sicola, senior managing director research services of Cushman & Wakefield. "We will focus on interacting with our global research department and develop higher-end analytical and statistical research."

While Cushman & Wakefield will become a subscriber to RealtyIQ, which intends to provide its service to the real estate industry at "affordable" prices, Sicola insisted, "We have still the opportunity to subscribe to any third party data base as long as we feel it's good quality and not duplicative to what we already subscribe to."

Cushman & Wakefield retained the use of SiteSolutions, and the ability to monitor the integrity of the data through a quality review process which may include conducting an annual audit using an outside entity.

Additionally, Sicola said Cushman & Wakefield will continue to report its own leasing and sale activities and availabilities to all other data collectors.

"We list our exclusives and will continue to list them in as many places as we can," said Sicola. "It's our responsibility to market them for our clients."

That's because RealtyIQ competitor, CoStarGroup's CEO Andy Florence, had expressed concern that the deal with RealtyIQ would preclude Cushman & Wakefield brokers from talking to his researchers or subscribing to his service.

"We have still the opportunity to subscribe to any third party data base as long as we feel it's good quality and not duplicative to what we already subscribe to. We are not bound to not subscribe," insisted Sicola. "We'll continue to provide information to CoStar."

But before the agreement was officially announced, Florence, in fact, pulled the CoStar feeds from Cushman & Wakefield, and expressed further concern that RealtyIQ.com's motives were to provide the information free to all, and eventually cut out brokers from all transactions in the future.

"It's the broker's worst nightmare: an Internet site where tenants and landlords can find each other and access the information they need to conduct transactions - without the assistance of a broker. Now, Cushman & Wakefield management may be trying to bring the nightmare to life," his statement read in a costargroup.com news update.

CoStar's Florence also cut off Reckson Associates from its feeds, concerned the REIT's successful spin off venture capital firm, Front Line Capital's ownership position in RealtyIQ was too close for comfort.

"Now that they are all one company we can't provide our competitors with our data," said a spokesperson for CoStar. But CoStar will still be calling Cushman & Wakefield and Reckson brokers to collect their listings. It could not be determined if CoStar also cut off the Rockefeller Group, the real estate company which owns the 80 percent of Cushman & Wakefield that is not owned by the brokers.

Cushman & Wakefield also did not sell its detailed lease and tenancy information, so while the building's structural bones are in place, for now, Realty/IQ's tenant and occupancy data is sparse.

RealtyIQ intends to update information on a 30-day cycle with additional real time postings in five categories: buildings, ownership, available space; tenants and done tance voucher will lose assistance as a result of HUD's new policy.

If a housing authority fails to reduce concentrations of particular groups or create new segregation, HUD will move to challenge the housing authority's civil rights certification under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and/or the Fair Housing Act of 1968. If a housing authority refuses to accept a voluntary compliance agreement to make needed changes, HUD can reduce aid to the authority or - under the most extreme circumstances - seek to take control of the management of the housing authority.

The new deconcentration policy issued by Cuomo is the latest in a series of efforts HUD has undertaken to achieve racial, ethnic and economic integration in public housing.