Is CRE Keeping Up With Rapid Change?

Moskowitz: “Even if it means people are looking to us for original ideas or market intelligence, that’s great.”

NEW YORK CITY—Though the real estate industry often gets chided for being traditional, much is changing at a rapid pace. New real estate technology tools are coming to market on the regular, companies are creating smart buildings and creative office space has become a necessary offering for landlords.

Many observers likely could debate whether local practitioners are keeping up but if there’s one thing that could be said with certainty, it’s that several of them are launching new tools and responding to the market’s evolution in innovative ways. Four such creators are scheduled to speak at RealShare New York Wednesday afternoon in Midtown.

“Spaceful is a product for tenant brokers to create delightful space tours for their clients.”

To wit, Xcelligent—the provider of commercial real estate information across the country—is working to revamp the building tour process for prospective tenants with a new tool, Xcelligent Spaceful, CIO Joe Emison tells GlobeSt.com.

“It’s a product for tenant brokers to create delightful space tours for clients,” he says. “How do we make it so that when our tenants are touring spaces, they have a coherent way of looking at spaces, collecting information and sharing it with stakeholders not on the tour?” The new offering seeks to address that challenge.

Another firm has embraced the dual trends of social media and blogging, creating a robust presence in both mediums.

“We have a weekly blog, and it creates a good opportunity to put out original content and information we talk about at sales meetings and among ourselves,” says Dana Moskowitz, president, EVO Real Estate. “We also tweet the blog too and people seem to read, re-tweet and comment on it. We hope it leads to business but even if it means people are looking to us for original ideas or market intelligence, that’s great.”

She continues, “I also encourage people in the office to do guest blogs, which they can send to their customers and contacts, and post it on their LinkedIn profile. That’s a tool that definitely fleshes out your professional background.”

Moskowitz also decided in recent years that the company “needed a social media presence” and created a social media committee at the company. Posts usually are made “a handful of times a day. It’s pre-organized, unless we see an interesting article that we want to share, in addition to our regular posts.”

Other members of the industry see their point of differentiation in how their personnel are organized when it comes down to working on a deal.

Ornstein: “All consulting services are part of our baseline. It’s a revolutionary way to do business.”

“In our Northeast division, our brokerage team works as one big collaborative team, with our consulting services integrated into every aspect of our service,” says Lindsay Ornstein, partner, Transwestern. “Typically at industry firms, there’s a siloed team approach, with many such companies offering consulting services but at arm’s length as an add-on service.

She explains, “That can create internal conflict and the firm is disincentivized to bring in extra services because brokers would have to share their fee. At Transwestern, because it’s integrated, all consulting services are part of our baseline. We create the optimal teams to suit each of our client’s needs based on that team member’s specific industry sector or geographic expertise. It’s a revolutionary way to do business.”

Mandel: “Relationships have been relied on too much; now there are tools to work more efficiently.”

One industry technology company sees the practice of using tools over person-to-person research as the wave of the future,” says Michael Mandel, co-founder and CEO, Compstak, “Our members are dispraportionately millenials and they’re going to their bosses to say, ‘I need this to do my job well. They see the value in worker smarter, not harder. When we talk to senior level executives, they question using technology and they say, ‘When I was doing this work, I was calling every person I could to get the data, and I spent the day making calls.’”

However, he opines, “People don’t have the time for that now, they need to analyze deals more quickly. There isn’t a substitute for relationships but I’ve seen a lot of brokers who haven’t been very good at the job but they’ve succeeded because of relationships. People can’t get away with that anymore—they have to be good at their job and use the tools at their disposable. Relationships have been relied on too much but now there are tools to do the work more efficiently.”

Disrupt or be disrupted. The industry is evolving into a new era that is forcing players to rethink their strategies, from brokerage to building and everything in between. Join us at RealShare New York on October 5th for impactful information from the leaders in New York CRE. Learn more.