There are many things that set a residential real estate agent apart from the rest of the pack, but the most important is his or her ability to assemble the greatest amount of information on their market, and make it immediately available to the client.

Remember that we're in the information age, and if you don't have everything in your head or at your fingertips, the consumer, with the aid of the Internet, will be able to go elsewhere. There are, of course, legislative and legal limits on what you can tell the consumer, but once you've sent the client to the local police department and without comment, for crime statistics, for example, many other avenues of providing information are open to you.

One thing most consumers appear to be interested in, is proximity to shopping. The goal of the developers of neo-traditionalist communities is to put retail as close to residential as possible, often with the two mixed in, but certainly within walking distance of the house. So that when you need a quart of milk at 11 p.m. and don't want to drive the car several miles, you won't have to.

Not everyone develops communities on the neo-traditionalist model. If you have a co-op arrangement with a new-home developer, it is in your best interests, to find out how close that quart of milk is to the house you are trying to sell to your client.

The one thing that, from my experience, can be said about retail is that there never seems to be enough of it. For example, CB Richard Ellis, the commercial real estate company, recently determined that in the Philadelphia market, the nation's fourth largest, there was a gap of almost $30 billion between what consumers were able to spend and the opportunities, retail was providing to spend it.

When you see a Lowe's rising across the street from a Home Depot, you have to ask yourself, do we need two of them... the answer has to be "yes." The value of residential remodeling is exceeding $200 billion a year, meaning that even two probably aren't enough.

Retail comes with a vocabulary all its own, and it is a vocabulary that continues to change as the industry tries to focus efforts on meeting changing demand.

We all know what a strip shopping center is, and, of course, a regional mall. It's when we come to power centers, lifestyle centers, and similar names that we become slightly confused.

We first have to acknowledge that retail categories have blurred. For example, there is a 14,000 square-foot chain drugstore around the corner where we fill our prescriptions, and buy aspirin and vitamins. I'm also able to buy printer cartridges and paper for my computer, saving me a two-mile trip by car to the office supply store. I also buy coffee there, which saves me a mile walk, or auto trip to the supermarket. If I forget someone's birthday, I can pop over and buy a card, instead of having to visit the card store.

If I need a stamp for the card, I simply walk across the street to the convenience store, instead of walking a mile to the post office.

The drugstore is known as a "category killer," because it blurs retail categories.

There has been a trend over the past six years to de-emphasize the regional mall, which began appearing more than 40 years ago. In older areas, there aren't surpluses of available land, plus you'll need at least 100 acres to build a mall that promises a return to investors. You'll find that in Texas and Arizona, but not in the Northeast, for example.

So developers instead turn to the "big box", these are the 100,000-square-foot-plus buildings housing Home Depot and Wal-Mart. One, two or more of these boxes typically anchor what are known as "power centers." A power center -- 250,000 to 600,000 square feet -- is designed to provide a huge selection of low-price merchandise. The anchors are usually freestanding and unconnected, with a few specialty tenants thrown in.

Other Categories:

• Community Center -- 100,000 to 400,000 square feet, with an anchor such as a major supermarket or Wal-Mart, and some apparel stores

• Neighboorhood Center -- Provides immediate needs such as groceries, sundries, and fast-food in a 30,000 to 150,000 square foot space

• Lifestyle Center -- Offers home products, restaurants, entertainment, and the kinds of clothing retailers you would find at your local mall

Knowing what they are called is simply interesting, knowing where they are, and sell, is definitely a service you'll want to provide to your clients.

Published: March 3, 2005

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Al Heavens writes about real estate and home repair and improvement. He is the author of What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home: Real-Life Advice For Hassle-free, Cost-Effective Remodeling.