You might remember last June, Remit was asking our friends, clients and colleagues to complete a survey about the use (and challenges) of data within the commercial property market. We had a tremendous response from across the globe and, following the survey, we also undertook face-to-face interviews with a number of businesses in the market.
The results of the survey and interviews has now been published in a RICS report “The use and value of commercial property data”, and it suggests that the property industry is now at a tipping point.
As we pointed out in our 2017 RICS insight paper “The Impact of Emerging Technologies on the Surveying Profession”, the industry is not currently structured around the wide-scale use of data. This is now changing, and changing rapidly.
As real estate data is becoming more freely available, the value of having an agent or broker who can keep a client up-to-date with the property market reduces. At the same time, non-property data experts from other fields with experience of analysing data and providing value in markets they are not familiar with, a now entering the property world. What is more, the exponential changes in technology combined with increased data availability, is giving these new entrants into the property world an opportunity to bring value to buildings, their owners, occupiers and investors.
As our report highlights, with information in a database rather than in the heads of professionals, the true expert will be one who uses data well rather than just remembers it.
Click here to download the report.