Analytics for Commercial Real Estate

A tenant looking for a warehouse, an office suite or a shop asks different questions from a landlord with a vacant building or an investor weighing yield. One site visit from a company can be a tenant, a landlord's adviser or a competitor. Reports that blend all three tell you very little.

The events worth recording are a space requirement submitted with size, area and lease term, a call about a listing, an inspection booked, a landlord mandate request, an investor registration for an offering memorandum, which is the sales package for a property, and the signed lease or sale itself. Each event is labelled by asset type and audience.

Deal cycles are long, and one deal can involve several people. A facilities manager downloads a brochure, a finance director opens the same listing a month later and a director rings after a lease expiry date comes close. Tracking keeps these visits on one company record where it can, so one opportunity is not counted as three.

Plenty remains invisible. Industry introductions, repeat landlords, broker networks and a sign on a vacant building all lead to a phone call, not a click. A source question on each form and a note on each call catch many, and honest reports mark the rest as direct or referral instead of crediting ads.