Real estate vets partner with NavigatorCRE to launch 'Dupre + Scott on steroids’

Sep 27, 2018, 10:43am PDT

​Dupre + Scott Apartment Advisors roiled the Puget Sound real estate industry when it said it was closing permanently at the end of last year.
The company had been the gold standard of market intel for apartment developers, landlords, brokers and public policymakers for 38 years. Who would replace the resource with Patty Dupre and Mike Scott retiring?

The answer emerged this week.
Veteran Seattle real estate executives Jim Bowles, Candice Chevaillier and Brian O'Connor unveiled their new research service, Commercial Analytics, which is partnering with NavigatorCRE, a Seattle tech company that aggregates, analyzes and animates data.
“Everyone I knew used and valued Mike and Patty and their information,” said Chevaillier. “So many people need and want the information.”

Unlike out-of-town data companies that merely harvest online data, Dupre + Scott surveyed apartment owners and managers. The pair turned the data into reports, but didn’t disclose the health of individual apartment companies and buildings and decided not to sell their company to protect the information they had collected from landlords.
Time was of the essence. Dupre + Scott’s closure was going to leave a hole in decades of rent, vacancy and operating expense data as well as the development pipeline and sale comps.
“Candice really rallied us and said, ‘OK, what do we do about this gap?’” said Bowles.
The question was who had the skills and heft to close it.
Bowles had worked with NavigatorCRE Chairman and Chief Innovation Officer Taylor Odegard at CBRE when Bowles was CBRE's Seattle-area market leader, so he knew NavigatorCRE was creating the platform that would work.

“It’s about trust,” said NavigatorCRE CEO Russ Johnson, who co-founded his company with Odegard and financial backing from Goodman Real Estate of Seattle. “This is a neutral, high-trust single repository with the understanding that out of that will come business analytics that don’t sacrifice privacy.”
NavigatorCRE’s tech savvy, Chevaillier’s passion for the project and O’Connor’s decades of experience were among “a whole bunch of stars that lined up,” Bowles said.
CA allows apartment owners and managers to contribute data. Contributors and subscribers will receive reports in print and digital formats. Subscriptions will be similar to what Dupre + Scott charged, Chevaillier said, though rates will be commensurate with what CA offers.
“(The market) has never seen what we are about to deliver – daily, instantaneous, live data access,” Johnson said. “People that know Navigator look at this as the old Dupre + Scott on steroids.”
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Commercial Analytics

• Business: Offers Washington state commercial real estate research services
• Partner: NavigatorCRE of Seattle
• Initial focus: Apartment markets in King, Kitsap, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties
• Co-founders: Jim Bowles, president of Lee & Associates Commercial Real Estate Services for Washington state; Candice Chevaillier, managing broker at SVN | Whitecap Commercial Real Estate; and appraiser Brian O'Connor, founder of O'Connor Consulting Group

Marc Stiles
Staff Writer
Puget Sound Business Journal

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