Mr. Baca was born in Guatemala and came to the United States after the death of his father when his mother was appointed Consul of Guatemala in Houston in the 1950’s. Through his involvement with the Consular Corps and his education during the early years of Houston’s rapid emergence as a world class city during the 1960s, Mr. Baca developed a sense of appreciation and a sincere interest in Houston’s real estate economy and its place as an international city.

Mr. Baca began his career in real estate when he developed the longest-running commercial transaction reporting service in Houston, the “Commercial Transactions Report” (1971-current) which cataloged sales of non-residential properties by geographic codes and street location, building type, financial data, seller and buyer. In 1979 Mr. Baca developed “The Databank”, a comparables database serving the commercial appraisal industry. 

During the 1980s Mr. Baca developed a series of commercial property reporting services including. The Apartment Survey, the total inventory of multi-unit apartment complexes with amenities, units size and availability, ownership and location with directions; The Office Building Survey, total inventory of multi-tenant commercial office properties with information on ownership, availability, occupancy, rentable area and values; The Foreclosure Report, a monthly listing of properties posted for imminent foreclosure by which investors purchased distressed properties from owners or lenders. These varied reports became a valuable informational resource during the expansive years of the early ‘80s as well as the depressed era of the mid and late ‘80s.

In the 1990s Mr. Baca, as Baca Landata, purchased the Wilson Maps and later Zingerey Maps, making him the sole provider of local parcel and ownership mapping services. He developed several on-line, information-gathering real estate products including: the first total market, all property residential real estate inventory database; a comprehensive database of 400,000 apartment units; Internet “smart” map of The Greater Houston Area; the first Internet distributed GIS mapping product for the Harris County Appraisal District; and a 2.5 million parcel, multi-county record archive of property records in the surrounding Houston/Galveston area. 

Mr. Baca is the owner of Court Records Research, a court record document retrieval and copying service, the only privately-owned business with offices inside Harris County courthouses. Other business ventures include:  Founder and CEO of Baca Publications, Inc. (1971-1988), a publisher of commercial real estate data (office/multifamily), including sales, inventory, and foreclosures; Founder, President and CEO of Baca Landata (1988–1999), an electronic Real Estate Information service provider serving the local residential market; and Founder and Owner of Baca Information Group (1999–2000), a provider of commercial, multi-tenant lease space data.

Education

Fred Baca graduated from University of Houston in 1969 with a BA Degree in Political Science.  Joining the military in 1969-70, he was assigned to Ft. Bliss for basic, Ft. Huachuca for AIT and Ft. Benning for Airborne training before being attached to the Texas National Guard, Airborne where he served from 1970-1974.

Achievements

Mr. Baca represented City of Houston in trade missions to Central and South America to develop Latin American trade for Houston (Chile, Panama, Guatemala) from 1995-1997.   He served as the Director of Houston Proud, a volunteer civic organization dedicated to improving the business climate, from 1985-1990.  Mr. Baca was President of the Real Estate Information Providers Association in 1998 (Founder and Director, 1996-1999) as well as a past Director of The Montessori School of Houston and St. Anne School. Currently he serves as Chairman of the Houston Realty Breakfast Club, a PAC representing the real estate community, and a member of the Greater Houston Partnership Real Estate Committee and Construction Committee and the West Houston Association. As a Realtor, Mr. Baca serves as a Director of TAR, Director and Commercial Division Chairman of HAR, past Chairman of the HAR Government Affairs Committee and is the 2001 recipient of the Realtor of the Year Award.

Mr. Baca has been a guest commentator on various Television and Radio programs including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, National Public Broadcasting and NPR. He has provided frequent commentary in most local and many national publications such as The Houston Chronicle, The Houston Business Journal, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Dallas Morning News and The Chicago Tribune. Mr. Baca hosted a weekly radio talk show on classical music station KLEF. He also produced and hosted his own weekly television show, “Houston Homes Today”, on local broadcast station Channel 26 which featured area homes and neighborhoods.

In January 2001, Mr. Baca joined Colliers International in Houston and currently serves as President.