Company History
Commercial real estate listings websites come and go. TotalCommercial has withstood the test of time, trials, and tribulations. We have been here since the very beginning and are with you every step of the way.
1989: A market in decline
The economic outlook for commercial real estate in 1989 was a period of significant transition and decline, marked by a "softening" market. The national office vacancy rate climbed to 19.3% by mid-year. The 1980s saw a massive construction boom fueled by earlier tax incentives (the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981) and risky lending.
By 1989, new completions routinely exceeded demand, leading to a supply-demand imbalance that collapsed values. By 1989, we all watched anxiously each Friday afternoon to see which financial institution(s) the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) would close.
A new idea for the commercial MLS
It was in November of 1989 that Rick Orr joined a committee of commercial real estate practitioners to take a look at the current commercial MLS system to see what could be done to improve it. The current system consisted of a monthly printed book with nine commercial properties per page.
The committee immediately got out the existing forms and began debating how many characters each of the various fields allowed for entry. After the first meeting, Rick Orr asked if he could withdraw from the committee and present his own independent proposal for a "new and different" MLS system at the next meeting.
The committee agreed, and Rick showed up at the next meeting with a completely redesigned format, a full page for each property which included a photo, map, and site plan for each property in addition to the necessary specs, etc. and ad copy.
Desktop publishing was in its infancy at the time and many people did not think the internet would have a use in day to day life. Rick’s idea was so “different”, that the committee wasn't sure how to respond.
It was hard to grasp how this was going to work. After deliberation, the committee decided not to endorse the idea, but gave permission for Rick to present his idea at each of the next three commercial real estate "pitch sessions" starting with the upcoming January 1990 meeting.
Rick spent much of the month of December contacting commercial real estate practitioners asking for information about each of their listings, promising to publish the info in a listing book and distribute the books to other agents.
Their first response was that they didn't have an advertising budget for that, to which Rick replied: "I'm not asking for money, I'm just asking for info on your listings." - the agents agreed to provide the property information.
1990: The Property Sourcebook
At the January 1990 meeting, the commercial agents were greeted with a 40 page booklet of properties for sale and for lease. A full page was dedicated to each property, including photos, maps, site plans, complete specifications and ad copy.
Each page was laid out in the same way, which made finding the property info an agent was looking for easy and straightforward. The publication was called "The Property Sourcebook".
Immediately, The Property Sourcebook started monthly publication and grew rapidly. At the peak of printing production, 1,800 booklets per month were printed covering most of the state of Florida. Printing reached over 1,000,000 pages per month.
1995: Going online
By the mid nineties, a new emerging phenomenon called "The Internet" was becoming a thing and it was quickly becoming obvious that The Property Sourcebook needed to transform itself into something greater.
Our founder Richard “Rick” Orr being the visionary he was, had the foresight to take the publication online. Which positioned the platform among the industry’s early digital listing resources as the internet was becoming mainstream.
As a result, propsourcebook.com went live in August 1995.
The online version of The Property Sourcebook continued to grow until 2005 when it had approximately 1,500 listings at which time Rick sold it to a third party and launched TotalCommercial in 2006.
2006: TotalCommercial
As the years went on TotalCommercial grew into a nationally recognized platform and has become a widely used resource for commercial property listings, professional directories, and industry networking.
2026: A new era
January 2026 Richard E. Orr sold TotalCommercial to Walter S. Moreira the son of Steven W. Moreira the former 2016 CCIM president and best friend Steven whom he met during time spent in Boy Scouts while achieving the rank of Eagle Scout. Steven and Walter have been friends for over 15 years.
Walter and Steven have taken ownership of TotalCommercial under the name CT Core Vision LLC.
Together, they are investing in the new era of TotalCommercial, built around trust, transparency, and technological advancement and are on a mission to redefine what it means to be a commercial real estate practitioner.
A few months after selling TotalCommercial Richard “Rick” Orr passed away suddenly at the age of 83 on Wednesday, July 29, 2026.