@issue
We are pleased to announce that Ho Yei Chow has joined us in the UK as an assistant consultant. Ho Yei is a graduate of Hanze University in Groningen, the Netherlands and Kingston University where she studied for her masters in Real Estate.
Ho Yei joins Steph Yates who joined us in April last year, also as an assistant consultant. Steph is a graduate of Reading University where she studied Land Management.
This quarter we focus on our tREnds paper for 2012. This is the sixth year we have been publishing tREnds and this year we've taken a new approach, restricting our predictions to under 140 characters. However a few of our contributors may have broken loose! Read more here.
The Founding of Scope Netherlands
The 3 international rating agencies (Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch) have been under fierce criticism in 2011 after downgrading both financials as well as listed real estate funds all over Europe and America. However, the need to inform investors on the risks of investing in real estate funds is more eminent than ever. So after a few years of feasibility studies, preparation and testing, Scope Netherlands was founded this autumn. Scope rates non-listed Dutch real estate funds mainly for the benefit of private investors. The 2 main products are investment ratings of closed end funds and management ratings. The company is jointly owned by Scope Analysis, a German rating institute from Berlin and Beurswaage, a Dutch fund analysis company.
Remit Consulting Netherlands was advisor from the start of the studies until the incorporation of the company.
Cambridge Property Research Club - 2011/12
The CPRC will be holding its next meeting in February 2012 and the topics will be based on the theme Cashflow and Income Streams. Read more about the Club and the forthcoming event here.
London Olympics - the Physical Legacy
Sadly the tipping point for regeneration collaboration in East London doesn't seem to have been reached. Neil Webster attended the launch of the recent RICS research report -The 2012 Games: The regeneration legacy.
Here, Neil discusses the issues... Read more
Photo: London 2012
Aspers at Westfield Stratford City
We are delighted to have undertaken bid support for Aspers successful tender for the grant of the first Large Casino Licence in the UK at Westfield Stratford City. It is fantastic to have been involved in such a landmark project.
Steph visited Westfield Stratford City shortly after opening and was surprised to find many units still being fitted out, despite the 95% let rate being advertised a month before opening. Read her thoughts here...
Facility management is facing tough times whilst budgets are shrinking and costs are rising. In the meantime, regulations, health safety issues, risk and environmental concerns are popping up everywhere in our daily work environment. Andrew was given the opportunity to give a talk at the FM Charities Conference in London on how cloud computing could enable organisations to access better software, improve their building management information and encourage flexible working. This event has given us great opportunity to hear from other FM members about how they have been able to save money or improve their service delivery. Other interesting topics currently in the FM environment are: flexible workplaces, sustainability and risk management.
See Andrews' slides from the presentation here...
New Director in The Netherlands
We are delighted to announce that Mark Leijgraaff is now a Director of the Dutch practice.
Mark has wide ranging experience, firstly in the asset management and financial sectors and later on from real estate management consulting. Mark has advised some of the largest Dutch asset management companies and retail companies and his project management skills make a valuable contribution to our more complex implementation projects.
Jenniffer Solomon came over to join Andrew, Melita and Mark to entertain guests at the IPF dinner.
Read more here...
Remit Netherlands advises on 300mil Euros
Remit Consulting Netherlands has advised Amvest on their finance deal of Euro 320 million.
For this, the third annual survey, we partnered with Revolution PR and Targacom Advisory to broaden the appeal of the survey and widen its geographical coverage.
In 2011, social media was a whole year more mature, the tools had advanced apace and the property industry was beginning to take notice.
Read about the results of this year's survey here...
What price sustainability? by Bob Thompson and Qiulin Ke. This paper will be published at the ERES conference in Eindhoven in June 2011 and this a short extract discussing how seriously UK property companies are taking Green issues.
Andrew and Bob presented the key note speech at the RICS HQ on Monday 4th April. The speaker panel was made up of the great and the good of property social media - Adam Tinworth (@adders) Kim Tasso (@redstarkim), Peter Brady (@peterbrady) and Tom Inglis (@feusd).
Here is the Remit presentation from the event. Click here.
Please do look at our Introduction to social media page, too.
The RICS Information Paper, The Role of Cloud Computing in Commercial Property, was launched at the RICS London HQ on 24th February.
This paper, the follow up to last year's paper on Social Media in property explains why every property professional should know enough about clouds to manage client expectations - and save cost in their business.
Click here for a copy of the paper or contact us for more details.
Corporate Real Estate Conference
Henry Stewart Conference Studies' Corporate Real Estate conference is taking place this year at the Mayfair Conference Centre, London, on the 22nd March.
Bob Thompson is presenting on the subject of Buildings as Machines and Andrew Waller will be following up the launch of the RICS paper on Cloud Computing with a wide-ranging discussion how "Clouds" will affect the way we work.
You can read a PDF of the conference brochure here.
If the mere presence of Andrew and Bob on the agenda weren't enough in itself, if you quote Remit Consulting when you book you will receive a 15% discount off the brochure price. You can't say fairer than that!
The RICS is launching their new information paper “The Role of Cloud Computing in Commercial Property” to be presented by the authors Andrew Waller and Bob Thompson at their London HQ onThursday 24th February.
The event will take place at 0830 to 1000 and although there are still a few left, places are strictly limited.
If you would like to attend, contact Paul Bagust at the RICS - pbagust@rics.org
(The magnificent?) Seven of us attended Expo this year and found a broadly upbeat atmosphere amongst the 37,000 attendees. Fear still remains that flattening yields and scarcity of investments will depress the market in the short term.
Photograph Copyright Messe München GmbH
For more about Expo and photos click here
ERES, Milan 2010 - Forecasting and Redefining workplaces
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
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
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...
Berlin Meeting of immoebs - 21st April 2010
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
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.
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.
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...
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...
Monday 2nd February saw significant snowfall in the South East of England and many people worked from home. We thought it would be interesting to know if working remotely is as effective as being in the office.
We therefore put a short survey on our website and more than 100 people responded. The Estates Gazette ran
Why @issue?
Have a look at our bookshelf and you'll find 'Permission Marketing' by Seth Godin, the seminal book on marketing following the internet revolution.
In his follow up book, 'Unleashing the ideas virus', Godin told us that an idea should spread like a virus and people can be encouraged to 'sneeze' these ideas to others.
@issue is our news page. It contains our news and ideas.
We'd like you to catch these ideas and sneeze them to your friends.
"Bless you".
