CRE Still Hasn’t Learned To Harness Tech For Property Tax Risk

Ross Litkenhous

WASHINGTON, DC–It has become a cliche that the commercial real estate community is ten years behind in its tech adoption compared to the rest of the industry. A cliche that nonetheless still manages to surprise when certain data points become available — such as the finding that almost one-third (32%) of over 200 C-level and senior CRE property tax and finance executives surveyed by Altus Group report that property tax exposure has very little impact on their firm’s underwriting assumptions. This is a percentage that translates into $165 billion of CRE assets (based on the $515 billion of asset investment sales last year in the US and Canada) that are at risk of underperformance due to the lack of strategic property tax planning.

This is shocking for a number of reasons, perhaps most of all because it is unnecessary.