Real Estate Development

A rad­ic­al re­think for glob­al prop­erty – and where we live, work and play As the real es­tate world emerges from the pan­dem­ic it is clear that all around us the urb­an land­scape is chan­ging. Many prop­er­ties are ob­sol­ete but also have ex­cit­ing fu­tures with new uses. Our town centres and cit­ies are un­der­go­ing fun­da­ment­al change – which all adds up to a world fo­cused on Re­pur­pos­ing Real Es­tate.Now in its tenth year, our Real Es­tate Thought Lead­er­ship series has covered top­ics such as the rise of in­ter­na­tion­al in­vest­ment in the UK, the growth of tech, the fu­ture of the of­fice, the rap­id rise of in­dus­tri­al & lo­gist­ics and the ar­rival of build-to-rent as a ma­jor as­set class.This year, with the Gov­ern­ment hav­ing pub­lished its Lev­el­ling Up & Re­gen­er­a­tion Bill, we fo­cus on the fu­ture of towns and cit­ies not only in the UK but in a series of key glob­al in­vest­ment hubs: Ger­many, France, the Neth­er­lands, Spain, Singa­pore and the United Ar­ab Emir­ates.After two years of lock­downs, work­ing, shop­ping and so­cial­ising at home, a de­bate is ra­ging about the fu­ture of town and city centres. Will they re­cov­er? How will they look in ten years? Will urb­an­isa­tion go in­to re­verse? And what does this mean for the real es­tate world?In `Re­pur­pos­ing Real Es­tate’ we provide the first an­swers hav­ing polled more than 300 lead­ing in­dustry pro­fes­sion­als and al­most 15,000 glob­al con­sumers.The res­ults are fas­cin­at­ing: al­most a third of real es­tate is ear­marked for con­ver­sion – with re­tail and of­fices to hous­ing the most pop­u­lar choices. Con­sumers want more green and open space, hav­ing spent too long con­fined to their own homes.But the good news is that in­vestors, hav­ing come through the pan­dem­ic, are still con­fid­ent in real es­tate as an as­set class. The big changes will be in what prop­erty they in­vest in, mean­ing the places we live, work and play in may be very dif­fer­ent in the years to come.

We asked the real es­tate sec­tor of­fice oc­cu­pi­ers, renters, re­tail­ers and life sci­ences busi­nesses what im­pact COV­ID-19 is hav­ing on de­mand for real es­tate in their area, and also on ad­op­tion of in­nov­at­ive tech­no­logy.The sweet spot for in­nov­a­tion and de­mand driv­en by COV­ID-19 is life sci­ences, where both the oc­cu­pi­ers and the real es­tate pro­fes­sion­als see equally pos­it­ive op­por­tun­it­ies. Driv­en by spec­tac­u­lar tech­no­lo­gic­al break­throughs like COV­ID vac­cine de­vel­op­ment, and with pub­lic and private sec­tor fund­ing pour­ing in­to the sec­tor, life sci­ences is an as­set class in the up­per right quad­rant, very much em­bra­cing the op­por­tun­ity.By con­trast, in-store re­tail is `stuck in the head­lights’ ac­cord­ing to our polling – be­set by fall­ing de­mand caused by lock­downs and less likely to have ad­op­ted in­nov­at­ive tech­no­logy as a res­ult of COV­ID. In­ter­est­ingly, real es­tate pro­fes­sion­als are sig­ni­fic­antly more pess­im­ist­ic about real es­tate de­mand from the sec­tor, than re­tail­ers them­selves. This may be a re­flec­tion of in­creased de­mand for lo­gist­ics space as a res­ult of the ac­cel­er­ated shift to on­line shop­ping.While real es­tate pro­fes­sion­als see of­fices as the most act­ively in­nov­at­ing in re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic, oc­cu­pi­ers are less con­vinced, al­though they also seem less pess­im­ist­ic about de­mand for of­fice space. This per­haps re­flects the real­ity of a blen­ded work­ing ap­proach which looks here to stay in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture.The build to rent sec­tor, by con­trast, is seen as `lucky’ by renters who see that de­mand is strong but do not be­lieve they are see­ing enough in­nov­a­tion in the light of COV­ID-19 rather than re­devel­op­ing tired prop­er­ties.

Many people have spec­u­lated over how quickly COV­ID-19 has ac­cel­er­ated tech­no­lo­gic­al ad­op­tion with­in real es­tate – but now we have a view from more than 4,000 in­dustry pro­fes­sion­als, of­fice oc­cu­pi­ers, renters, re­tail ex­perts and life sci­ences pro­fes­sion­als: five years.Across all groups this is the most com­mon pre­dic­tion al­though the mean re­sponse is four years. The im­pact of lock­downs and the need to rap­idly em­brace tech­no­logy is ex­traordin­ary: how many people used Teams or Zoom for busi­ness 18 months ago?

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) and ma­chine learn­ing, 5G IoT, vir­tu­al/aug­men­ted real­ity and ro­bot­ics are con­sidered the com­ing forces among real es­tate cus­tom­ers, which be­gins to ex­plain how tech­no­logy is ex­pec­ted to ac­cel­er­ate change in the sec­tor dur­ing the 2020s.These are pro­found changes which will not only im­pact how key in­dus­tries are man­aged but also how they oc­cupy real es­tate – and who oc­cu­pies real es­tate on their be­half. In­ter­est­ingly no one tech­no­logy scores over 50%, sug­gest­ing views are di­vided on which in­nov­a­tions will have the most im­pact on the real es­tate over­all.Tools such as Amazon’s Al­exa have re­moved the mys­tique from AI as people have real­ised that it can make their lives easi­er, and it is per­haps not sur­pris­ing to note that the highest ac­cept­ance of this tech­no­logy is in ar­gu­ably the most tech-ad­vanced sec­tor – life sci­ences.

Real es­tate as­set man­age­ment is now data-rich, hav­ing for many years re­lied on a dis­par­ate set of met­rics and a haphaz­ard ap­proach to meas­ure­ment.Giv­en the value of most prop­er­ties, this is sur­pris­ing, be­cause mar­gin­al gains can make a huge dif­fer­ence, par­tic­u­larly across a large port­fo­lio if this level of dis­cip­line is re­peated.It is no sur­prise, there­fore, that data col­lec­tion is seen as a key tool as own­ers battle to meet tough sus­tain­ab­il­ity tar­gets.At the same time, oc­cu­pi­ers are also see­ing the be­ne­fits of data col­lec­tion, par­tic­u­larly around the op­tim­al use of space. Yet again, the life sci­ences world is at the cut­ting edge of this think­ing.

Re­cov­ery of the real es­tate mar­ket is well un­der way, with op­tim­ism rising and a vac­cine-promp­ted bounce pro­pelled fur­ther by two power­ful forces driv­ing the sec­tor’s fu­ture: tech­no­logy and ESG.

Tech­no­logy and an in­nov­at­ive ap­proach to sus­tain­ab­il­ity and well­being are set to se­cure the fu­ture of the of­fice. In a world where the of­fice now has to com­pete with the com­fort of work­ing from home, it needs to find a new pur­pose to per­suade people to re­turn to the com­mute, at least some of the time.

People miss the of­fice, the hu­man in­ter­ac­tion it pro­motes and the clear bound­ar­ies that of­fice life cre­ates between per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life.In many or­gan­isa­tions, it has been young­er people who have lob­bied hard­est for a re­turn to the of­fice, un­able to work sat­is­fact­or­ily at home and miss­ing the op­por­tun­it­ies and so­cial in­ter­ac­tion that of­fice life presents.As city centres be­gin to work out a new fu­ture, tech­no­logy will be at the heart of the de­bate, with the more fa­vour­able build­ings al­low­ing people to work seam­lessly and con­nect with col­leagues around the world at the same time as giv­ing a feel­ing of safety and se­cur­ity.With ‘the di­git­al work­place’ now con­sidered the new work­ing en­vir­on­ment, em­ploy­ers need to both em­bed the phys­ic­al im­ple­ment­a­tion of smart tech­no­logy in their build­ings and to en­sure the vir­tu­al work­ing ex­per­i­ence trans­forms the em­ploy­ee ex­per­i­ence by fos­ter­ing ef­fi­ciency, in­nov­a­tion and the so­cial ele­ments that many people crave in their work­place.