Commercial Investment Real Estate

JUL-AUG 2017

Commercial Investment Real Estate is the magazine of the CCIM Institute, the leading provider of commercial real estate education. CIRE covers market trends, current developments, and business strategies within the commercial real estate field.

Issue link: http://cire.epubxp.com/i/847000

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 20 of 54

COMMERCIAL INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE 16 July | August 2017 Technology Rules F or decades, the lack of uniformity in commercial real estate data has been the bane of the industry's existence. To determine a value for a property before deciding to purchase it, potential real estate investors must fi rst col- lect and extract key fi nancial data from a multitude of disparate fi les that come in countless formats and fi le types. This is a burden for buyers, brokers, and lenders alike. The analysis of the property — and comparing its fundamentals with other investment opportunities — becomes unnecessarily dif- fi cult and time-consuming. In a world that's seen Bloomberg terminals streamline the analysis of corporate data and FICO scores used to rate credit- worthiness, the lack of uniformity in commercial real estate data is incongruous and ineffi cient, especially for multifamily properties. Standardizing Data In many circles, commercial real estate is still not considered an institutional asset class, in large part due to this lack of cross- industry data standardization. While this problem has become more evident in the digital world of 2017, the lack of standardization has been recognized for many years. About 15 years ago, several major industry players realized the problem and set out to develop solutions, largely focusing on creating agreed-upon XML standards for multifamily data. Though the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Multi-Housing Council, and major commercial real estate investors backed their efforts, neither the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization nor the Multifamily Information and Transactions Standard has resolved this prob- lem. Too many commercial real estate professionals still perform data entry. As time has progressed, technologies have emerged to develop data standardization. Among the top contenders, automatic data capture holds the greatest promise. With previous standardization attempts, the chief problem was the focus on creating a specifi c format for all parties. Partici- pants would adhere to this standard format when compiling and Maxiphoto/GettyImages Automatic data capture will solve the problems with multifamily data. by Elliot Vermes INVESTMENT A N A LYS I S

Articles in this issue

Archives of this issue

view archives of Commercial Investment Real Estate - JUL-AUG 2017