Remit Consulting News Feed

ERES, Milan 2010 - Forecasting and Redefining workplaces

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Bob gave two papers at the conference, chaired a session on Corporate Real Estate and commentated on a Rugby 7's tournament arranged for the edification of the delegates introducing a crowd from all over the world to the "Up and Under" and "a game of two halves".

ERES 2010 had around 450 delegates from all over the world and saw some 300 papers presented over the course of three days. This makes it the largest real estate conference in the world by some margin.

The first paper Bob presented, co-authored with Dr Qiulin Ke of Nottingham Trent University, was about redefining workplaces as collections of workspaces and building an appraisal model on that basis. Read the slides...

The second paper, entitled "Making forecasts more holistic", was co-authored with Dr Sotiris Tsolacos of PPR and addresses the problem of identifying market, rather than asset specific, risk and building a model that can overlay specific views of risk on existing forecasts to explore different scenarios. Both papers will be published in Journals in due course once they have been through the peer review process but the slides are available here. Read the slides....

Federation of Corporate Real Estate Advisers Seminar - 12.05.2010

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

A Maturity Matrix Can Measure "CRE Competence" Of An Organisation - How High Do You Score?

The FCRE's morning seminar on this topic was at the offices of Allen & Overy in the City. Andrew's presentation compared various approaches to measuring CRE performance and suggested some basic principles and where to start. Andrew's slides are available here or at the FCRE website here.

RICS Conference 2010 - Social media paper

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

RICS Wales National Property Conference, 29th April 2010
RICS South West Property Conference, 9th June 2010

Andrew spoke about Social Media at these two RICS conferences - the focus was on understanding the benefits and risks; and where to start managing exposure within these media. For a copy of the slides click here...

Lexis Nexis FM - CRCs

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

The deadline for initial submissions under the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme is 31st July. Melita explored some of the potential effects of the legislation on service charges in her June article for Lexis Nexis' Facilities Management Monthly.

It provides a summary of legislation and a short guide to the implications for property & facility manager and tenants.

Read the article (PDF)

Launch of Property IT Benchmark Survey 2010

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

We would like to invite participants to our fifth IT benchmarking survey for the property industry. Respondents to this short survey include many of the leading property services firms, fund managers and property companies. Click here for more details.

Lexis Nexis - The Automation Maze

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

In Lexis Nexis' Facilities Management Monthly, Melita Thomas summarises the key points that Facilities Managers need to consider when selecting IT systems.

Lexis Nexis - Not just for teenagers

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

In Lexis Nexis - Facilities Management, Melita Thomas explores the benefits and drawbacks of using sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to communicate with building occupants, share knowledge and develop relationships with industry contacts. Read more...

Process manuals - not just compliance

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Cost savings, performance measurement, compliance, risk management and continuous improvement - all at once? Rudi Römisch from our Munich office looks at how one project can address many issues. Read more...

RICS Journal of Commercial Property - Occupier systems

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

The RICS published Andrew's article about selecting and using property management systems for corporate occupier estates in their March/April 2010 edition. A copy of the article is on our website here.

Berlin Meeting of immoebs - 21st April 2010

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Jenny and Rudi helped Christian Schulz-Wulkow, manager of immoebs Berlin/Brandenburg events and workgroups, to organise the most recent networking event. Read more and see the event photos...

Vesteda launches 350 million euro CMBS

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Hans Gerritsen, partner in Remit Consulting in the Netherlands advised Vesteda on the launch of their recent CMBS issuance. Here is a link to the press release.

MIPIM News Survey 2010 Report

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Following up our joint survey with The Estates Gazette in 2009, we worked with the EG again this year to find out what the property industry relies on to get its news.

The survey was posted online for 3 days at the end of the MIPIM conference in Cannes. The key findings are that despite property professionals being a traditional lot - they still read their paper journals at the weekend, for example - nearly all types of media are being read. Portals are very popular and Twitter has more than doubled its following since last year. Against this, video has few fans despite excellent content being available.

You can read a summary of the results here.

If you would like a copy of the full report, please contact us.

MIPIM News Survey 2010

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Following up our joint survey with The Estates Gazette in 2009, we worked with the EG again this year to find out what the property industry relies on to get its news.

The survey was posted online for 3 days at the end of the MIPIM conference in Cannes. The key findings are that despite property professionals being a traditional lot - they still read their paper journals at the weekend, for example - nearly all types of media are being read. Portals are very popular and twitter has more than doubled its following since last year. Against this, video has few fans despite excellent content being available.

You can read a summary of the results here.

This is how the Estates Gazette reported the findings.

If you would like a copy of the full report, please contact us.

Lastly, but by no means least, there is a German language summary of the results on our German website here...

Jenny wins the LaSalle Investment Management prize

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Our colleague Jenniffer Solomon, German Partner of Remit Consulting in Berlin, has won this year's LaSalle Investment Management Prize for the best dissertation in the MSc in Property Investment course of the University of Reading. We are very proud of her achievement - congratulations!

In her thesis she looked at "The future of the CMBS market in Europe - can regulation be the lifesaver?", evaluating the structured feedback of more than 130 market participants across Europe, which allowed her to draw some interesting conclusions. A summary of her survey can be found here...

tREnds 2010

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Through adversity comes innovation - that is the theory. But, in 2009 we found little innovation in the property industry... except, that is, within property companies. The industry as a whole has been concentrating on releasing capital and reducing overheads but, in many parts of the property investment business, standing out is still not a great career move.

Here is our team's yearly round-up of what we think will happen during the next 12 months. Read more...

The Role of Social Media in Property - RICS Paper

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Although Social Media's best known applications might be Twitter and Facebook, this new wave of applications is much more than just Social. Hammerson and Grosvenor are using Twitter in their shopping centres and Aviva is using Facebook to manage a property portfolio. Business networks are being built on industry platforms such as CREOpoint and companies are using Crowdsourcing to reduce the cost and time taken to resource projects.

This RICS Information Paper will help you prepare for the opportunities, and often risky consequences, of Social Media - it is here to stay: use it wisely. Read the paper (PDF)...

Also see our Social Media page for more details

The future of the CMBS market in Europe

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Much has been written and speculated about the role of structured finance instruments and especially mortgage backed securities, including CMBS, in the current financial crisis.

But what really went wrong and how should it be addressed to prevent a repetition in future? Jenniffer Solomon recently surveyed 136 respondents drawn from issuers, investors and service providers supporting the CMBS "industry" and her report provides some unique insights into the market view of the crisis.

The results together with her analysis are in a presentation here...

In addition, the German paper Immobilienzeitung published an article about the survey on November 19 2009. The article can be found here but you'll need to pay to download it.

Facilities Management - Health & Safety risk in contracts

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

Clients cannot pass on the responsibility for poor health and safety to their contractors, warns Melita Thomas in her latest article for the LexisNexis publication, Facilities Management.

Social media - RICS Commercial Property Journal

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

What is the relevance of Twitter or Facebook to Commercial Property?

To mark the launch of the RICS Information Paper on Social Media in Commercial Property, The RICS Commercial Property Journal are running articles on how Social Media will affect your business in the September/October and November/December issues.

Read the first here...

IT benchmark survey summary

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 07:32:58 GMT

This year we undertook our 4th survey of property firms and investors, this year, to see whether IT efficiency and spending has improved in the current economic climate.

There is good news - costs have come down - but also bad news: costs have not come down enough! We also found clues to making IT support more efficient and effective. Read our summary report here.

If you did not have a chance to complete the questionnaire the first time round and would like a full copy of the results together with a comparison of your own figures against your peers, contact us...