CRETech 2022: The Data Dominates

Willy Walker. Image by Gabriel Frank

The second day of CRETech 2022 was marked by a deep appreciation for the role of data, its collection, its analysis and its most useful applications in the world of commercial real estate operations.

The keynote: Form over function

Walker & Dunlop Chairman & CEO Willy Walker spearheaded the day’s agenda, speaking of his firm’s significant financial growth over the past 10 years across its revenue, net income and EBITDA margins, owing in good part to its investments in database technology and its acquisitions of synergistic start-ups. Walker detailed the firm’s acquisition and optimization of the Galaxy database software, in addition to integrating it with the company’s Enodo machine learning platform, giving the most accurate, yet most accessible possible reports and information to its customers.

Walker cited the company’s growth and emergence as one of the nation’s largest finance providers as not only a matter of the quality of the data analytics it delivers, but also their simplicity and speed; top of mind is the ability to deliver results quickly and insightfully to customers. “It is a matter of meeting a timeline seamlessly, without hiccups,” Walker said.

Walker described the firm’s growth and desire to innovate as the primary motivators for such endeavors, favoring function over flashiness, saying, “if we’re not continuing to grow those numbers, all [this] technology means nothing to us.”

Quality over quantity

On the more technical side, a panel discussion between Yardi Systems Vice President Brian Sutherland, VTS Chief Product Officer Gijo Matthew and Altus Group Vice President of Global Marketing Aviva Fink highlighted many changes in the way commercial real estate software companies and property managers are managing and utilizing data. Of note was the deeply uncertain times professionals across all sectors of commercial real estate are experiencing, and the role that accurate data about fundamentals such as rent, leasing, occupancy and energy expenditure play in allowing their users to get ahead.

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“In a time of uncertainty, people look for insights, and [those] that come out on top leverage data, asking, ‘How do we take data from all these sources, bringing insights back to customers?’” Matthew said. Sutherland provided a possible answer: When a firm has acute knowledge of how to use the analytics it already has—rather than endlessly chasing more data—that is effective utilization.

“We augment it with our research,” Sutherland detailed, emphasizing Yardi’s practice of contextualizing the data as it relates to what an operator is looking for specifically; the actual meaning behind the numbers.

Fink agreed, advising a “boots on the ground” approach of active evaluation as opposed to mindless number-crunching, where the data makes a “quality journey … of [being] moved and applied to tools.”

The broader scope

In another session, CBRE Chief Technical Officer Sundeep Davé highlighted the company’s utilization of data and how it tailors them to a specific operator’s needs. “[We have] an industry-specific data model; we ingest data from 300+ sources that we anchor around a client.”

Describing data points as an isolated “silo,” Davé views data collection and analysis as not so much a one-size-fits-all idea, but as an item that can be tailored specifically to what a given operator may be doing at a specific time. Still, firms, no matter how large they may be, should not overextend themselves. “As a service provider, I can deliver the best outcomes at the lowest cost,” Davé concluded.