The industry is waking up to the exciting possibilities that using data, both big and small, can offer. Its quaint, traditional, slow to change tide is turning, and we have a real opportunity to make something of our information for the industry as a whole, before the tech companies beat us to it!
Data is everywhere; from GDPR’s looming first birthday, to footfall data on the high street, and issues logs generated in offices, information is indisputably being generated. Our recent RICS Data Paper, found that there is four times as much data available than there was five years ago. Merely having data though, is not enough. In fact, there is an arrogance to having data with the potential to improve our business and industry and not using it. The idea that gut feel and tradition are better than hard facts does not fly in our changing world. Evidenced by the shift we’re seeing from the property industry of yesteryear, towards a more serious direction; even at MIPIM, there were far fewer rose-fuelled business lunches on the Croissette, and far more data exploitation. One technology company we spoke to had successfully mined the attendance lists and had scheduled seventy meetings over the three days they were there. Even at a networking level, data is leading the charge, and the property industry must take steps to get its nose back in front of the technology companies.
And we’re getting there! After years of preaching the virtues of good clean data, through our 2017 RICS Paper, our PAM and PM Forums, and most recently, our RICS Data Paper, Remit is delighted to see a move towards using it. Money is being spent all over the industry on gathering data, cleaning it and most importantly, using it to our advantage. In Real Estate Finance, MIPIM 2019 saw Cloudscraper Exchange a global integrated and institutional grade real estate trading platform, designed to use data analytics and AI, for buying, selling and mainly financing real estate assets.
In addition to this, American financing firm Kabbage, is offering loans to small businesses, by using alternative data, including social history, to inform its lending decision making. Property Managers are able to predict late payers by tracking their payment date history, and reacting when a normally very early payer seems to be butting up against due date, to establish the cause of later payment, and resolve it, before due date is missed.
These ideas are exciting and revolutionary in themselves, but the biggest change will come from a collaborative effort to mine clean and accurate data for use across the industry.
In the Netherlands, there is effort being made to create a data eco-system, across which to share data for the benefit of all. At our recent Associates Meeting, Frank Kerstens, Head of Innovation at ABN Amro, made the point that ‘everyone needs the data, but no single company can afford to do what needs to be done’. Importantly also, would any single company with to fund an initiative which will benefit its competitors as much as itself? A centralized database would be a better solution, with incentivised participation (or penalized lack of it). Centralised databases, such as SBR Nexus in the Netherlands, are offering this vital opportunity to share data, and the UK can certainly learn from this. In our Data Paper, 48% of respondents said that they would like more market data, while 38% said that one of the biggest bars to progress was data sharing problems. In this, Henry Ford’s teamworking quotation springs to mind; ‘if everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself’.