Deloitte’s 2020 Commercial Real Estate Outlook surveyed 750 CRE executives—owners/operators, developers, brokers, and investors—in 10 countries during the summer of 2019 to assess how, and to what extent, emerging technologies and analytics are helping leaders make more informed location decisions and create a more memorable tenant experience over the next 18 months. Here’s what we learned:
According to Deloitte, tenant preferences are changing, due to increasing urbanization and globalization, changing workforce demands, such as flexible location and workspaces, and technology advancements, such as AI and Internet of Things (IoT).
As CRE companies look to 2020 and envision the next decade, the most successful ones could follow the mantra: location, experience, analytics.
Key Outcomes:
1. Tenant experience is a top priority, which requires companies to put tenant and end-user preferences at the center of every business decision.
2. Data control, access, and analysis are expected to become more critical as data generation and leveraging data continue to rise.
3. Companies should more fully embrace artificial intelligence (AI), which can not only enhance operational efficiency but also help identify risks and opportunities much more quickly than current technologies and processes can.
4. Cybersecurity and tenant data privacy are becoming top priorities, as the commercial real estate (CRE) industry now has access to a wider variety of personal data such as user location, communication, behavior, and sentiments, and cyber threats are increasingly real and pervasive.
5. While real estate market changes will offer new opportunities for employees, CRE organizations would have to attract and retain talent using data science and analytical capabilities, as well as retool and reskill the existing pool to ensure they have the right skills. Collaborating with proptechs should help CRE organizations bridge the talent gap in the short term.