Brothers keep real estate professionals in the know: Yale Robbins, president, Henry Robbins, executive vp, Yale Robbins, Inc

Real Estate Weekly, April 18, 2007

Right from his start of real estate career updating listings for Wolf & Macklowe, Yale Robbins realized that, in this business, "you're only as good as what you know."

Staying true to that philosophy, the mathematics graduate went on to build one of the country's most successful publishing and data and search services dedicated to keeping professionals involved in every aspect of the real estate business informed with the most up-to-the-minute statistics available.

Today, Yale Robbins, Inc. is New York's preeminent data provider, search engine host and trade magazine publisher employing 50 people, with its New York headquarters at 102 Madison Avenue.

Yale Robbins said he was always fascinated by the business of real estate and, after graduating from CCNY with a degree in mathematics he soon segued his listings job into a position as a broker. Armed with a real estate license, Yale later returned to school and received an MBA in Finance from Baruch College.

In 1977, he decided to start a consulting business that provided feasibility studies to lenders and developers. Seizing upon a greater opportunity, he soon expanded his client base by mass marketing the information to subscribers.

By offering key information to a broader audience for a fraction of the cost than they had previously paid, Yale Robbins, Inc. quickly became established. The data Yale Robbins was collecting would ultimately become Residential Construction in Manhattan: A Market Guide.

A year later, his brother Henry Robbins, a former architecture student at CCNY who also graduated from Baruch College with a BBA in Finance, joined the young company.

With massive amounts of data already compiled, the Robbins were ready for the next step: they published the first ongoing subscription-based service for residential construction.

A first on the market, Residential Construction became an overnight success. Filling a gap in the market, the brothers produced quarterly, semiannual and annual market surveys, construction activity reports and coop and condo digests and directories providing the entire industry with comprehensive profiles of the market.

It was the first in a series of innovative moves that led to Yale Robbins Inc's domination of the real estate information sector with data used industry-wide in analyzing and evaluating the current state of the market, as well as predicting trends. It is a resource for numerous articles in such publications as The New York Times, Real Estate Weekly, Crain's New York Business, Forbes, New York Magazine and many others.

In the 1970's, the brothers introduced "dollars-per-square-foot" analyses to an industry that had previously tabulated strictly on a per-room basis and, in the early 1980's, Yale Robbins, Inc. launched Co-op/ Condo Conversion Digest closely followed by Condo Sales Report.

In 1983, the brothers broke new ground in the commercial sector with Office Buildings, one of the first photography-based listing directories in the country. Published annually, today's Office Buildings cover 33 counties and major markets in 10 states. It is the industry's single largest distribution, sent to nearly every broker in a given market, as well as to tenants, financial institutions, developers, managing agents and the real estate divisions of Fortune 500 companies.

In 1999, the Robbins published the firm's first consumer guide, The Condo Book, and they continued at the forefront of the industry with the creation of MrOfficeSpace.com in 2000, a web search service that was unique for the industry because its use was free. Updated daily, it provides information that may be searched by office size, square footage, county and rent rates.

Following the success of MrOfficeSpace.com, Yale Robbins, Inc. developed a program in which the data could be offered as a private label to a host of commercial real estate firms, brokers, economic development corporations and integrated seamlessly into specific sites.

Never to sit long on their laurels, in 2001 the Robbins acquired their first editorial-based publication, The Cooperator, a monthly trade publication covering everything from asbestos abatement to window replacement, and later produced a New Jersey version.

Yale Robbins, Inc. also produces an annual trade show: The Co-op & Condo Expo. This year marks the popular show's 20th year. Held on April 25 at the Hilton NY, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, the Expo will feature 260 booths, six free seminars and an on-site bookstore with well-known authors signing throughout the day. It is anticipated that the show will attract more than 4,000 visitors this year.

Most recently, Condo-Sales.com was launched in 2004 as a searchable database for condominium sales based on size, square-footage, neighborhood, zip code and address.

With the single most comprehensive group of products ever developed for the real estate industry, Yale Robbins, Inc. has provided essential tools to the real estate industry for more than 30 years. And the longer the firm continues, more products and innovations appear that address the industry's ever changing needs and provide invaluable information resources.