Not long ago, most real estate companies made business decisions based on guesswork and backward-looking data aggregated into spreadsheets. Today, new technology automates data collection with advanced analytics to provide a complete picture of a portfolio’s opportunities and future risks. That’s big data. When it comes to leveraging big data for big results, Diana Norbury knows her stuff. Norbury is senior vice president of multifamily operations for Seattle-based Pillar Properties. Her experience includes over a decade of managing mixed-retail multifamily communities throughout the U.S. Pillar Properties is an award-winning developer, owner and manager of luxury apartment residences in the Puget Sound area and a developer of senior living communities through sister company Merrill Gardens. Since joining Pillar, Norbury has focused on refining revenue management and business intelligence practices, talent management and education, operational systems implementation, and lease-up and marketing strategies for the company’s growing portfolio. Yardi recently sat down with Norbury to learn more about the benefits of big data. How do you use big data to drive performance? Norbury: I use big data in a variety of ways. Big data is a huge resource when we’re having team calls. For example, I can go to the data when we’re talking about vacancies and pricing. With Asset Intelligence, we finally have a tool that incorporates all our property and leasing data with historical traffic and pricing data. The system marries all that information together. I can find information fast without having to dig around. It also helps us format and present our data, which we can export into Excel or PDF — I think that’s really cool. How do you use predictive analytics? Norbury: I use Asset Intelligence and predictive analytics specifically for upcoming exposure and vacancies. In the past, we’d use a variety of...

As an owner, you wear many hats and have many strengths. If interpreting reports is not among your talents, you’re not alone. Many leaders aren’t getting the most out of team updates because they are not comfortable with the terms used on the reports. A brief refresher may do the trick! Below is a quick cheat sheet of nine common ratios that you will encounter and how to interpret them. Capitalization Rate (Cap Rate) When you are just getting started with a property, cap rate comes in handy. The cap rate tells you the actual value of an investment beyond its appraisal value. To find the cap rate: Cap rate = sales price of a comparable income property ÷ net operating income of comparable income property Net Operating Income (NOI) NOI is also used to determine the value of a property. It uses data from the previous year to account for the loss of rental revenue due to vacancies, maintenance and other factors. To find the NOI: Net operating income = gross operating income – (operating expenses ÷ gross income) Market Value Your cap rate and net operating income can then help you to understand your market value. This will change over time based on several factors. To find market value: Market value = net operating income ÷ capitalization rate Vacancy Rate This is undoubtedly a figure that you will refer to often. The vacancy rate is the number of unoccupied units compared to the number of units available for rent. A lower number is better than a higher number. To find the vacancy rate: Vacancy rate = number of unoccupied units ÷ total number of units Occupancy Rate Another common ratio used to understand the quantity of available units is occupancy rate. To find the occupancy rate: Occupancy Rate...