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,...

Before smart buildings and smart cities can become a reality, the real estate sector must focus on smart processes – and that means automating property management services still tracked on paper. Technology has the potential to enhance transparency and trust between property owners, tenants and vendors, but many property companies are “still figuring out how to take a simple service request on a clipboard and track its progress,” says Bernie Devine, regional director of Asia Pacific for Yardi. Devine has worked at the intersection of property and technology for three decades, and for the last six years with Yardi. “When I first started in real estate, most people operated from spreadsheets or, worse, paper. Today, I’m still talking to clients who manage their workflows on pieces of paper and others who turn to the Yellow Pages for procurement,” he says. This isn’t just inefficient. “Without automated processes we don’t have data. And that’s the bottom line – because without data we can’t make informed decisions.” Yardi’s VendorCafe, for instance, centralises product and service vendor information into a single system of record, reducing paper, speeding up invoicing, automating the onboarding process for vendors and, ultimately, cutting costs. “An automated system means tenants can report a problem in a few clicks, have the request reviewed and resources allocated from a list of pre-qualified vendors,” Devine explains. “Our system addresses the entire lifecycle of procurement, from vendor selection and onboarding through to compliance and tracking warrantees. You don’t need an army of procurement people – you just need a portal that is easy for everyone to use. “The customer knows what’s going on each step of the way, and that gives them comfort, even when there are delays.” Vendors gain real-time visibility of purchase orders and work orders...

Developing financially successful shopping centres has become a significant challenge in the face of major threats to the traditional retail business model. The retail experience is shifting from a point of sale to an immersive experience; instead of endless rows of shops, the modern retail centre features restaurants, cafés, movie theatres and a variety of personal services. In response, many retail operators are implementing emerging innovative technologies that can strengthen their static trade and thus compliment and compete with e-commerce. A successful strategy for attracting customers to retail centres arises from first analysing and understanding regional trends including demographic shifts, culture and politics. Utilising that data and understanding it is key to determining a successful revenue generating tenant mix. Centre size and location, along with other factors, will determine the degree to which new technology can and should be implemented. One business-critical element, however, stands at the centre of every successful strategy—data. Retail asset managers and investors are discovering the benefits that business-wide technology platforms provide. Instant access to sales, leasing, prospect information and much more has surpassed both timeliness and the hassle of consolidating data from multiple disparate systems. Furthermore, merchants are keeping pace with a mobile-enabled consumer base by adopting mobile payment and shopping capabilities, and they expect no less as they interact with their retail landlords. Such technology can help retailer centre owners and operators reduce costs, drive revenue streams and increase asset value. Data’s key role Thanks to technological progress, the retail sector is now able to define persuasive offers with the help of big data. Because the retail sector generates more data per month than many other vertical real estate markets, simple tools and tables for gaining valuable insights into retail businesses and trends have become obsolete. Advanced, but...

Team Yardi will join 800 multifamily professionals in Las Vegas on October 2-4 for MFE Conference 2019, a must-attend event for industry executives, operators, managers, developers and investors. To meet new challenges and capitalize on fresh opportunities, this year’s focus is “Pivot Planning: Your Path for Multifamily’s Changing Future.” Heading into 2020, multifamily businesses will be dealing with rent control, rising operating costs and fast-changing customer demands. Finding solutions including the best technology to smooth the path forward will be critical — and the conference agenda is designed to help attendees do just that. Now more than ever, having good operational data is necessary to understand and drive property performance. From actionable analytics and holistic benchmarking to just-in-time marketing with prescriptive actions, big data is a must-have for every multifamily business. Must-Attend Session with Industry Leaders Don’t miss Anant Yardi, founder and president of Yardi, on October 4 at 10 a.m. for “Unleash Data: An Interview with RealPage and Yardi.” Mr. Yardi will be joined by Steve Winn, founder and CEO of RealPage. This intimate conversation with the leaders of the industry’s top data providers will be led by Jamie Gorski, chief marketing officer of The Bozzuto Group, and will cover strategies to adopt now and in the near future to drive smart decisions in a changing industry. “The MFE Conference provides industry professionals with a wealth of knowledge on how to effectively navigate industry trends and changes. It is an honor to moderate the ‘Unleash Data’ session — which is occurring for only the second time in the conference’s history. I am particularly excited to interview the founders of Yardi and RealPage, two reputable industry leaders of real estate software, and hear their insights on short- and long-term strategies for driving business decisions...

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...

Editor’s note: reprinted with permission from Firestarters – Provada Edition. How to handle and collect available data is becoming a key competitive advantage in real estate, says Richard Gerritsen, regional director for Yardi in Europe. The quality of said data is essential.  The real estate industry currently faces a watershed moment. “We are in the middle of an explosion of the volume of available data. Tenant apps and all other proptech solutions are worth nothing without the data. The upside is that it is easy to get the data, but at the same time collecting it is also the most difficult – and boring – part,” Gerritsen recently told me. As the real estate industry becomes increasingly digitalised, the quality of data will become ever more important, says Gerritsen. “You could argue that data is the most crucial part of the business. We are living in the data era and it is such a big part of the real estate industry. Any proptech solution tries to add value based on the data already available. Without good-quality data, the value of a proptech solution is limited in a best-case scenario. If you can’t guarantee that the data is good, you can lay dozens of apps over it, but it won’t be a sustainable solution. Those who say it is too much of an effort to bring it together will not succeed.” Gerritsen provides the following example to illustrate the importance of getting the details right. “If I log into a tenant app and discover that the lease information is not correct, that I have logged into unit 24 instead of 23, or that the app doesn’t know me at all, that is really bad. In the past 20 years, those types of errors were commonplace,...

Editor’s note: The following article by Kevin Yardi, vice president of consulting practices for Yardi, was originally printed as a Realcomm Advisory on May 31, 2019. It is reprinted here with permission. Various aspects of big data, AI and Machine Learning have been reported extensively in this space and elsewhere. I’ll use this opportunity to highlight some key points that I think are particularly important to helping the commercial real estate industry benefit from these capabilities. Just what are we talking about? “Big data” means large, complex data sets that most traditional software platforms can’t manage. AI refers to computer systems that can perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence. Machine learning, a form of AI that enables systems to “learn as they go” without being explicitly programmed, supports informed decision-making by assembling and analyzing property information more quickly and more accurately than other systems. The expansion of digital data availability, computing power and software enhancements, along with cheap storage, have made these options viable for commercial real estate. What are the commercial real estate benefits of AI and Machine Learning? AI and Machine Learning can give companies better-structured data that improves business performance. For example, AI systems can detect patterns in conditions affecting energy consumption without being requested, then optimize the target temperature every 30 seconds to ensure comfort without using more energy than necessary. They can also learn from past performance to react to changes in occupancy, weather and other factors. All this translates into better performance through lower utility, energy and equipment maintenance costs; increased tenant comfort that reduces service calls and increases retention; regulatory compliance; investor satisfaction; and higher ENERGY STAR® scores. In short, AI saves energy and money while creating more comfort than humans could do on their own. More...

Ruthless and unbiased, heart disease kills 610,000 people per year in the United States, amounting to one out of every four deaths in the country. A leading cause of death across both genders, the CDC estimates that over half of the nation’s deaths can be attributed to heart disease. Doctors say early detection is key, by the time significant warning signs like chest pain and shortness of breath are detectable, it might already be too late. Unfortunately, for many Americans, a trip to the doctor’s office can be complicated and costly. But what if an EKG could fit inside your wallet? A new mobile EKG device can monitor cardiac health and track the early warning signs of hearth disease and stroke. Mobile Monitoring AliveCor, the makers behind Kardia, a mobile, pocket-sized EKG monitor, believe they’ve found a solution. A little smaller than a business card, the Kardia comes outfitted with two metal plates designed to receive basic information about the user’s heart, including heart rate, blood pressure and – most importantly – atrial fibrillation. Users simply place their fingers on the device and wait for the data to be transmitted to Kardia’s mobile app. The focus on atrial fibrillation is significant because changes in this particular data set are often an early warning signs of stroke. Most hospital-grade EKGs measure 12 different aspects of the heartbeat, but focusing on atrial fibrillation, AliveCor was able to shrink their mobile electrocardiogram down to a gadget that easily fits in the palm of your hand. “[It is] the most common arrhythmia, the one that we need to detect, doesn’t need all 12 EKG leads,” AliveCor CEO Vic Gundotra tells Wired. “And it’s not invasive at all, it’s just like brushing your teeth every day.” Comprehensive Reports The Kardia...

The future of urban planning lies in not just accessing information, but deploying it as a resource to enhance urban planning and improve the lives of residents. Every minute of every day, data is collected, stored and analyzed. So many of our daily activities now leave behind digital breadcrumbs, from trips to the grocery store to the books we check out of the library. Sometimes it can feel like we’re trapped in a dystopian nightmare reminiscent of 1984, but in reality, data is agnostic and nonpartisan. There is no opinion or bias, just facts and figures. So what’s the upside of all this statistical accumulation? For city planners, data collection provides the opportunity to fundamentally change public works and infrastructure. The more data shared, the better organization possible, from efficient traffic measures to responsive streetlamps. Thanks to organizations like Open Government Partnership and the Open Data Institute, urban planning is now in the midst of a “data revolution.” “We are helping build the data infrastructure for the UK and beyond” ODI CEO Gavin Starks recently declared. “As our economy and society continue to become data-driven, we need to address the fact that data is as important as roads, water and energy.” “Working with our partners and diverse communities, we will continue to support and convene data pioneers, helping them develop open standards, improve data literacy, build trust, address policy, create business models, and tackle challenges that impact everyone. Together, we will help build a robust data infrastructure that enables open innovation – at web scale.” Tracking Transportation According to the US Census Bureau, the average daily commute last about 25 minutes, one way. That’s almost an hour a day spent in traffic, and many nine-to-fivers will tell you that’s on a good day. Between...

At this year’s Real Estate Strategy and Leasing Conference that took place on October 6th in Toronto, Peter Altobelli, vice president and general manager for Yardi Canada, joined a panel of experts for a session titled “New Technologies Across the Spectrum That Can Help Drive Your Business Forward and Provide Competition to the Landscape.” Altobelli and his co-panelists shared insights on new products coming to market and how breakthrough technologies are changing the industry and revolutionizing asset management. Also discussed were trends and opportunities for Canadian businesses to take into serious consideration. The session was moderated by Michael Scace, partner at Ashlan Urban Realty, and joining Altobelli on the panel were Maggie Burns, vice president of real estate at Breather, Nick Romito, CEO and founder at VTS, and Brandon Weber, CEO and founder at Hightower. On the topic of current technology innovation, Altobelli elaborated that in the last 10-15 years we have seen the launch of the smartphone and tablets, and with increasing reliance on those platforms, many businesses have responded to shifts in consumer demand and are adopting these impactful technologies to keep pace. Consumer demand is without a doubt driving innovation at the corporate level, and Canadian companies need to take note of this demand and make sure they are responding to their customers with the right tools and services. However, Canadian businesses are known to be resistant to taking risks and are unlikely to be early adopters of any new technology, no matter how promising. But with an increase of American companies investing in and merging with Canadian companies, the business culture is changing. In the meantime, Altobelli sees the need for thought leaders to educate the industry, so Canadian companies can perform better and thrive by taking advantage of the...

Advances in technology are giving the retail property sector a helping hand to define compelling offerings through the use of big data. Developing financially successful retail centres is challenging. In fact, it’s widely regarded that real estate companies, invested in retail assets, are among the leading pioneers of strategic real estate management. Successful strategies are born out of understanding the best approach to engage shoppers with the right tenant mix to suit regional trends as demographics change and are impacted by regional economic, cultural and political circumstances. Adapting a retail offering and providing new ways of engaging retailers and consumers while delivering services that enhance relationships, drive down costs and deliver value for owners are undoubtedly key. However, at the very heart of any successful strategy is one, mission-critical element – data. With the retail sector generating more data in a single month than many other vertical real estate markets, the use of simple tools and spreadsheets is redundant as firms struggle to gain valuable insights into retail operations and trends. Business technology is undoubtedly a major driver. Helping provide a solid, error-free foundation to house data is one thing, but the power comes from delivering a seamless, real-time framework that enables employees to analyse the data in such a way to deliver sound retail strategies. In an industry that is so invested in defining compelling offerings through the use of data, has the technology sector risen to the challenge? The most successful retail real estate companies are now embracing the latest technology to support their strategies and the leading software providers are raising the bar. Cloud-based offerings now enable companies to host their data in a single secure database, providing a risk-free environment that delivers real-time access to strategy-shaping analysis to desktops and...

If you knew how visitors interact with your website, what their ages and interests are, could you serve them better? Could you use information about your clients and potential clients to create more effective marketing? That’s what the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) aims to find out. At the 2013 NAR Convention and Expo in San Francisco last month, chair Danny Frank hosted a talk about data collection titled Big Data and You: Predictive Marketing, Predictive Analytics and Data Visualization. Big data is essentially the aggregation of separate but potentially related information sets that can then be interpreted in a practical way. For example, a website can collect data about the actions of its visitors and then use that data to predict and surface what the user will want to see or do or buy next. This is called predictive marketing. If you have ever noticed “You might also like” messaging on a site like Amazon or Netflix, then you have seen an example of a business using the data it collects to tailor its services to you. In theory, big data can be used to develop predictive analytics that will improve user experience – both in the real world and online – and, as a result, increase profits. The retail applications of predictive marketing are apparent, but what are the applications for the real estate industry? Several ideas were posited at the NAR talk mentioned above. Todd Carpenter, managing director for NAR’s recently created data analytics group, explained that analytics are like listening and “the more you listen to your client, the more you can serve their needs.” To that end, one of the group’s aims is to figure out how to use the mountains of data that NAR already has at its...