In these uncertain times, modern commercial real estate landlords and operators have turned to technology and data to weather the storm and gain a competitive advantage. Those that do so are arming their companies with an ability to quickly pivot operating models, reallocate investment to counter risk and capitalise on opportunity.
The right software lets you future-proof your business, enables you to understand performance in real-time and most importantly helps you predict what’s next – the biggest hotspots and opportunities, which team members are doing well, and who needs some support.
You don’t have to look far to see the transformative power of data and examples of how it is successfully being applied to drive digital transformation. Take the financial sector, where unleashing the power of data has not only streamlined workflows but also enabled firms to grow their businesses through powerful AI applications that personalise their services.
According to a 2017 Forrester report, there is an increasing gap between financial firms that embrace technology to fuel growth and business transformation and institutions that continue to do business in traditional ways.
The evolution of the stock market also highlights the value that technology and actionable data unlocks. Look at the New York Stock Exchange. Thirty years ago it was characterised by highly inefficient and manual processes and opaque information. Today? Technology has transformed the way the market operates and traders are able to leverage real-time data and algorithmic trading to execute deals in nanoseconds.
The commercial property sector is making great strides in using new software offerings such as leasing and asset management platforms to capture and analyse data. Landlords and brokers are using the resulting insights to make better decisions that move the needle. We’re fast approaching the next major frontier – market benchmarks.
Using real-time market data to make better decisions has been the standard in our own backyard for other property types such as multi-family and hospitality for some time. RealPage Yieldstar® helps PRS owners leverage market data to determine pricing in real-time and for hospitality the STR Global Report helps landlords benchmark a hotel’s occupancy or revenue that day.
Unlike PRS real estate or the hotel space, when it comes to office, industrial or retail properties, market leasing data on pricing, tenant demand or operating efficiency within buildings is neither transparent to the market nor recent.
We are working hard to develop the ultimate market benchmark. In June, we announced plans to launch VTS MarketView™ – the industry’s first real-time benchmarking and market analytics. For the first time, VTS customers will be able to compare their own property-level performance against market-wide data on our platform.
Stenprop adopts VTS
by Richard Hook
Multi-let industrial property investor Stenprop has appointed VTS to manage its entire U.K. portfolio.
Stenprop is using the leasing and asset management platform to manage all tenant negotiations across all of its core assets including the 365,000 sq ft Compass Industrial Park in Speke, Liverpool. The adoption of VTS follows Stenprop’s decision to transition from a multi-asset holder across several geographies to a provider of serviced industrial space for small to medium-sized businesses.
Executive property director Julian Carey said that Stenprop “needed a platform that can grow alongside the expansion of the multi-let industrial asset business across the UK and enable more efficiencies - the VTS platform does just that”.
Aggregated and anonymised, this data and insight will be embedded in users’ daily leasing and asset management workflows and presented in context to drive better decisions, informed by key market-wide metrics such as net effective rents, concessions, leasing spreads and velocity, level of tour requests and deal conversion rates.
For the commercial property industry, the possibilities for how technology and data can be applied are endless. For example, AI could be applied to real-time market benchmarks to provide landlords with property-specific predictions and recommendations for maximising asset value.
These are exciting times, but not without risk. Now, more than ever, it’s time to embrace the data revolution or risk being left behind.
Ryan Masiello is chief strategy officer and co-founder of VTS
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