Industry leaders from Grubb Properties and MG Properties Group recently shared insights on big data, benchmarking and forecasting with Yardi’s Paul Yount. “You won’t be successful in any market if you don’t have the right tools. You need the data. You have to be ready and prepared,” said Joe Anfuso, chief financial officer at MG Properties Group. Nothing could have been truer for real estate companies in 2020. With unanticipated challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, real estate operators had to act fast to protect their bottom lines and keep staff and residents safe. For most companies, that meant adopting technology to transform their businesses. Read on to learn how Grubb Properties and MG Properties Group have been using Asset IQ, Yardi’s multifamily asset management software part of the Yardi Elevate suite of multifamily solutions, to guide decisions and improve performance with better data. Pivoting to online services With the growing demand for contactless leasing and transactions, many operators have made the pivot to doing business online. And it’s likely that contactless leasing — including self-guided tours — will be around long after the pandemic. Additionally, asset intelligence driven by big data has been guiding real estate operators through challenging times and will continue to lead the way. “2020 budget numbers were very different from what we projected in 2019. We didn’t see the normal seasonal changes, and budgets were pretty much out the window which has made competitor and peer data very important to accurately measure performance. We need to know how we’re measuring up to our competitors, what concessions and lease terms we’re offering and if we’re keeping the back door closed to avoid being in a vulnerable position,” said Shawn Cardner, executive vice president of Grubb Properties. According to Joe Anfuso,...

When you invest in your energy strategy, the rewards are proportionate. Simply put, the upgrades can pay for themselves. You just have to get the ball rolling first. That was just one of the key takeaways from our recent webinar on energy efficiency with McKnight’s Senior Living. Randy Moss of Yardi led the discussion on ENERGY STAR benchmarking and best practices for providers, and he was joined by Christopher Wright from Merrill Gardens, who shared his company’s own experience with tracking energy usage and reducing spend. Merrill Gardens’ road to energy success Starting in 2016, Merrill Gardens was required to record and report their energy usage by the city of Seattle. And at first, everything was done manually. Staff were pulling data from paper bills and accounting systems to upload into ENERGY STAR for benchmarking. Eventually, the city’s utility provider enabled automated data sharing, which simplified the entire process. The state of California soon followed with regulatory requirements, and seeing the writing on the wall, Merrill Gardens began rolling out benchmarking at all of their communities nationwide. Like in Seattle, many utilities needed manual data entry at first, but nowadays, the majority allow automated data transfer. By late 2019, Merrill Gardens had a year’s worth of data, which gave them great visibility into their buildings’ usage compared to one another. “Based on those sorts of trends, we already had the ability to identify buildings to focus special attention on for CapEx and operation improvements,” said Wright. Unfortunately, the pandemic brought new hurdles, but that only sharpened their focus. “In early 2020, like everyone else, we discovered our resources were suddenly and unexpectedly limited, while at the same time, savings and operational efficiencies were even more important,” said Wright. “Partnering with Yardi over the last...

Yardi has long supported the mission of Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB), an Amsterdam-based limited private company, to improve real estate sustainability performance with environmental, social and governance benchmarking. The property management technology provider recently elevated its commitment by becoming one of just nine sustainability consultants and solution providers in GRESB’s Global Partner program. In this role, Yardi helps GRESB participants complete sustainability assessments, manage ESG data and advance ESG performance. The company will also collaborate with the organization’s industry, media and research partners to share sustainability best practices across the property management industry. GRESB works with the industry to define the global standard for sustainability performance in real assets, providing standardized and validated ESG data to the capital markets. More than 80 institutional investors, collectively representing more than $18 trillion in institutional capital, use GRESB data and analytical tools. In 2018 GRESB assessed 903 real estate funds and property companies, 75 infrastructure funds, 280 infrastructure assets and 25 debt portfolios. “GRESB members can use Yardi’s energy solutions to drive actionable environmental, financial and operational insights into their real estate portfolios and engage more closely with the investor community. These capabilities benefit our clients around the world, and we are pleased to extend them to an even broader community of real estate portfolio managers,” said Akshai Rao, vice president of energy and procurement for Yardi. A GRESB evaluation measures sustainability performance indicators including energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and waste. A multi-layer validation process produces high-quality data that investors and participants can use in their investment and decision-making processes. “Real estate companies that establish and track a full range of ESG metrics achieve multiple tangible business outcomes for shareholders,” GRESB says on its website. In one recent project, S&P Dow Jones...

Currently, over 45% of the US commercial building market uses the ENERGY STAR®, the US EPA’s voluntary certification program designed to measure energy efficiency and improve resource management. At the heart of ENERGY STAR® lies the ability to track energy usage data to reduce energy consumption and improve building performance. “It all starts with taking a look at what you have and seeing what [information] you’re tracking and what data is available,” Craig Haglund, Program Manager, for the US EPA’s ENERGY STAR program, said in the National Apartment Association’s recent webinar, Financial Success with Energy Benchmarking. With comprehensive data collection and analytics capabilities, US EPA’s Portfolio Manager works in concert with ENERGY STAR for complete resource management oversight. “They say ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure,’ which is 100% true,” Haglund continued, “but that misses what you can do with all that data.” Whole Building Consumption For building owners and managers interested in tracking their energy, water and waste metrics, ENERGY STAR provides an easy, comprehensive management tool: Portfolio Manager. With Portfolio Manager, building data can be tracked and analyzed. Users can create customized reports and monitor changes in energy, water, greenhouse gas emissions and more. “Portfolio Manager literally includes hundreds of measurement metrics,” explained Haglund. “Standardized reports can help users assess portfolio performance and share that information or integrate it into other presentations.” Those measurement metrics can be applied to any sized property portfolio, from one building to, in the case of East Coast real estate services firm Bozzuto Management, 63,000 units spread out over 220 communities and representing 2.1 million square feet of mixed-use development. “We have been using Portfolio Manager since 2012,” said Bozzuto’s Director of Sustainability, Peter Zadoretzky. “Over the last couple of years, we’ve gone from a messy,...

On December 28, 2009, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed Local Law 84 (LL84), mandating annual energy reports for any privately owned buildings over 50,000 square feet. (In October 2016, the city expanded LL84 and LL88 to include buildings 25,000 Sq. Ft. and higher, though, this doesn’t officially go into effect until 2018.) Enacted as part of the city’s Greener, Greater Buildings Plan (GGBP), LL84 was designed to help building owners not just measure energy use, but to develop actionable energy efficiency strategies based on that data. By the time the first benchmarking report was released in 2012, the city had gathered energy usage information from 1.8 million square feet of commercial and residential space, making it one of the largest accumulations of benchmarking data gathered for a single jurisdiction. “Buildings account for 75 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in New York City, yet many property owners and managers do not know they [can] be a part of the solution and save money by making their buildings more energy efficient,” said Mayor Bloomberg in a statement after the first benchmarking reports were released in 2012. “This benchmarking report will help us understand where we can act most quickly to significantly reduce GHG emissions and achieve our PlaNYC goals.” Lights, Meters, Action Often considered the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency implementation, improving a building’s lighting system can dramatically reduce energy consumption. In New York City, roughly 18% of energy use in non-residential buildings can be attributed to lighting, which also accounts for 18% of the city’s carbon emissions. With the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% within the next 15 years, Local Law 88 (LL88) was designed to address the need to encourage lighting upgrades for improved energy efficiency and reduced...