Summit Observations: Emerging Themes in Real Estate Investment Management

A few weeks ago we gathered with our clients for the annual Resolve Client Summit. The Summit was a great opportunity for us to get a condensed intake of the topics that are top of mind for the industry.

As always, it was a powerful gathering with representatives from many of the leading real estate investment firms. At the same time, there were several important emerging themes that I find noteworthy.

1. The industry is hungry for a better way to manage investments. Being a software company, a great deal of our contact with clients is facilitated by their IT departments. As much as we appreciate our IT contacts and depend on them, I was encouraged by the fact that this year’s Summit was attended by a record number of representatives of the business side. This tells me that the people tasked with managing real estate investment portfolios are increasingly realizing the need for better technology solutions to support their business goals.
   


2. Cash and debt are still the two hot buttons. With lower valuations and continued pressure on lease rates and occupancies, fund and portfolio managers are clamoring for better tools to manage liquidity and keep close tabs on debt levels, payment schedules, LTV, DSCR, and the many covenants attached to each loans.
   


3. Data visualization is becoming a hot topic. One of the most popular items at the Summit was a hands-on training session on our Executive Dashboards, signaling that data visualization is gaining recognition as a way to help executives make sense of the information available to them.
   


4. Companies are looking to standardize across global operations. This year we had our first client representation from Europe, and “going global” was a topic that attracted a good amount of attention. Companies that have implemented investment management solutions in their North American operations are looking to roll them out globally. This will not only allow these companies to reap the benefits of the solutions across their operations but, just as importantly, help them take a big step towards standardizing systems and processes.

Are these also the issues on your mind? What do you think will be the keys to success in the coming years? Please feel free to comment or send me a note with your thoughts.

A Big Step Forward

Congress’ recent passing of the Financial Reform Bill once again emphasizes the investor’s need and desire for greater transparency, which in turn means greater trust and confidence with their investments.

Most recently, one of our clients took a leap towards greater transparency by providing one of their large investors with direct access to their portfolio information in the Request reporting and business intelligence system.

Instead of the static pdf’s that are commonly used for investor reports, this investor now has the ability to view and analyze any piece of information related to their entire portfolio, a group of properties that they can define (by property type, region, asset manager, etc.), or a single property.

The investor can view rent rolls, tenant exposure and concentrations, A/R reports, lease expiration reports, Statement of Operations, and more. They can also build their own dashboards, manipulate charts on the fly for real-time analysis of the data, and easily drill down from the macro to the micro.

As an example, imagine having read that Circuit City is closing all their stores and immediately being able to know your exposure…that’s powerful.

Needless to say, to make this possible you need a secure environment that limits each investor to only see their portfolio. But once you have such a solution in place, it is rather empowering. Compared to other investment managers who don’t offer as much transparency, I would say that investment managers who offer greater transparency have a clear competitive advantage in retaining clients and raising future capital. What do you think?