Want to buy or sell some commercial real estate? Well, count on paying through the nose for research, valuation, mapping and a host of other expenses.

Orbital Sciences Corporation (NYSE: ORB) has tapped into the need for this information with a new business-to-business electronic initiative. The company's MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) subsidiary has invested in the systems needed to provide businesses with electronic access to essential land information for real estate transactions in the United States, Canada and other locations.

The MDA unit already has been quite successful, with about $45 million in 1999 revenue. But now it's taking its message public, targeting substantial additional revenue growth this year.

The business serves major customers in the real estate, financial, insurance and legal sectors. Orbital says the system is one of the most complete online access services for textual and visual real estate property information available today in North America.

Used in residential and commercial real estate and related property transactions, the database includes land title/ownership and encumbrances; asset valuation and taxation; imagery, maps and other geographic information; and local-area demographic data.

MDA currently operates an online database of property and asset valuation information covering more than 800 U.S. counties in 46 states, which represents almost 75 percent of the American population.

And here's the really cool part – through a satellite and aerial image collection, MDA offers an integrated digital archive of visual land information, such as up-to-date imagery, maps, lot plans and related data in selected geographic areas.

Major customers for MDA's e-commerce unit already include primary and secondary mortgage lenders, title and property insurance companies, land appraisers and real estate professionals, and numerous city, county, state and national government agencies.

In other news, it was a good quarter for FelCor Lodging Trust Incorporated (NYSE: FCH), which beat analyst estimates by 3 cents. The hotel real estate investment trust proudly announced that funds from operations (FFO) for the first quarter were a buck a share, compared to 97 cents in the same period last year.

The REIT's revenues increased 7 percent, from $126.9 million to $135.7 million, while EBITDA increased 5.1 percent, from $106.9 million to $112.4 million.

The best news came in the area of revenue per available room (RevPAR), the hotel industry's most accurate measurement of financial performance. Over the company's total portfolio of 188 hotels, RevPAR increased 6 percent (2.8 percent for comparable hotels and 21 percent for non-comparable, renovated hotels).

“We continue to improve our debt maturity profile and increase our level of fixed rate debt,” said Andrew Welch, FelCor's vice president and treasurer. “The closing of the $331 million in long-term, fixed rate loans that increased our average fixed rate debt maturities from six to seven years, and reduced our floating rate debt to 33% from 50% of total debt achieves our 2000 targets in these areas.”

Published: May 4, 2000

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Lesley Hensell covers commercial real estate and financial issues for Realty Times. Based outside of Dallas, Lesley works with high-tech and real estate clients as an independent marketing and public relations consultant. She also writes for several publications, including the Dallas Morning News. E-mail Lesley at: lhensell@earthlink.net