Proptech & Place: The way forward for real estate

Hosted by Sue-Lin Tin, guest Stefan Perkowski
Thursday 28 May 2020

ST:
Over the past few months, the world as we know has dramatically changed. Businesses have quickly adopted online models, new technologies and social distancing measures to keep their doors open and their employees and the community safe. 

So how does this change the way we use technology in real estate and what role will technology play in the future as we transition to a new normal? 

Hello and welcome to Talking Property with CBRE, a podcast in which our team of experts share their commercial real estate insights. My name is Sue-Lin Tin, Head of Digital Solutions and Innovation at CBRE and I'm your host for today's episode. Over the next little bit we will be talking about how technology is helping us to connect with our clients and industry in this ever-changing climate. I'm joined by Stefan Perkowski from Advisory and Transaction Services in our Office Leasing business. Thanks for joining me. How are you today? 

SP:
I'm doing really well, thank you Sue. Already a bit of a busy day, I’ve been in and had a real-life meeting at 7:30 this morning with a client, followed by a Teams call and then back to home, where I'm now doing a Zoom call. So, using all aspects of technology this morning. 

ST: 
Fantastic. What might a typical day have looked like before all of this started?

SP:
A typical day before COVID was getting up in the morning, nice and early ready for the commute into work, which would normally take half an hour/40 minutes - into the office bright and early, normally around eight o'clock. Meeting all the team members face to face and then it would be a series of phone calls to clients, face to face meetings with clients and team members was pretty much the majority of the day. Going out and walking buildings, talking to tenants so a lot of face to face interaction with clients is typically how my day used to play itself out. 

ST:
And so, with the rapid shutdown and all the social distancing measures that we've had to put in place, what had to change?

SP:
Well, I guess the first big change was that we lost access to our big, beautiful office in North Sydney. That was initially the biggest change and hurdle to get through, not having the facilities that we had in our office and developing those facilities at home. So, you know, just from the small things of not having two screens to not having the laptop at the right height, not having a printer at home. I guess a lot of the things that we took for granted at the office. Initially it was all about setting that workplace up correctly, knowing that you're going to be spending majority of the days working from home. 

ST:
And would you typically have used technology pre-COVID when engaging with clients? I know that you said you do a lot of face to face meetings with them. 

SP:
We did, but I guess it was a technology that was more aligned with phone calls. So, for example, I’ve got clients who are based in Perth and a lot of the time it was just conference calls with the client, and everybody was jumping on the conference call, we’d share minutes before hand, everybody was looking at their individual minutes, that was typically the main form of technology that we used to connect with clients. There was an evolution and some Zoom calls were starting to make their way in with meetings, but they weren't very well utilised. There was no sharing screens, video or anything like that. It was predominantly using Zoom as a new mechanism for a conference call. 

ST:
And how do you think technology has helped you engage with the clients in the current climate? 

SP:
Well, it's really interesting there's been a few different mediums and forums that we've been using where we’ve really had to utilise Zoom style meetings. We've done everything from leasing update minutes with clients, we've also been doing submissions and presentations to clients via the Zoom medium. It's been a really interesting development of how, for example, when we’re doing presentations, of how to use that medium, there's been things like having to have a chairperson who can guide all the other people on the call throughout that presentation. So, it's been a new way of adopting to how we do presentations via Zoom calls, which has been really interesting and a really sort of innovative way of doing those calls. 

We've also been doing market updates, which under COVID everybody’s been looking for the latest information on what's been happening with the market, and we found a really powerful tool was, rather than just dealing as we normally would with the one client at a time and provide them with market updates, we were able to send out a Zoom invite to up to 200 clients at a time and host forums via Zoom. We found to be a really powerful tool, we host them at 8:30 in the morning, they were short and sharp for about half an hour, everybody could jump on the call, we would do our presentation and they could log questions while we were doing the presentation. So even though it was a virtual medium, it was still a very interactive medium. So, it's been a real positive that's come out of this, using that forum to connect clients.

ST:
And what's the feedback been on the market updates and so on from clients?

SP:
It's been really positive; it's been really positive. I think, because it makes being able to access that information so much easier for clients. They don't have to for example, if they were to come into our office and we did a Town Hall 

meeting, they all have to take that time out of the day to physically travel into our office, do all the meet and greets and then start the presentation. So, it could be anywhere between half an hour to an hour worth of their day, taken up with just travel time coming into our office and then leaving the office as well. Where this way, at their convenience, they can sit at their computer with their peers and receive the information. So, I think they found it really valuable from that perspective of just how convenient a medium it is. 

ST:
I know I’ve attended couple of webinars in a similar format and have found them really useful as well. I guess going back to face to face, you know, walking the building with the client and so on. How have you seen a change in technology enabling that sort of interaction going forward?

SP:
When this first hit, everybody was reluctant to do physical inspections of properties, that was the main hurdle that we had. So, there's two mediums that we've been using well, the first one is Plans. 

Plans is a CBRE interactive tool that we have adopted where we can take a floor plate of a building, we can do a test fit of that floor and the user is then able to manipulate that fit out, live, to suit them. So, what I mean by that is, if there's too many workstations and they want more open plan then they could delete some of the workstations off that plan. They could add in extra workstations to really customise a test fit for them. Then it takes it one step further there is a 3D function, which they click on and then pick a different number of looks and feels that they want for that fit out, might be a creative style or more of a generic type of office layout, but they can completely customise the feel of the fit out.  Then finally, the really clever piece of the technology is then they can then turn that into a virtual walk through for the fit outs. They can then actually deep dive into that fit out and walk through the floor, see what the view lines are, see what the look and feel of the floor is and get a real appreciation for the floor plans. 

We found Plans is a really powerful tool to gain engagement with tenants because once we've done that tour we can then email a link to them and then every time they email that link onto other people within their business, that activity is fed back to us and we can get a real sense of how engaged they are on the property. So, Plans has been a really powerful tool for getting a sense of that engagement that we have with our occupiers on a property. 

The other tool that we've been using really successfully, is virtual tours. What COVID has done is, I guess is gone are the days of just simply being able to send a listing sheet and a floor plan to a tenant. They need more and we want to get them more engaged, and we want to get them to come to the property, ideally to have a look at it. So with the virtual technology which we now have in house we can do a scan of the floor and then we can load that up to the cloud, and we can then email that scan through to the tenant so we can take an enquiry and we can say to tenant, “Look, I've got a really good floor that I think is going to be really well suited for you. Here's a link, have a look into a virtual inspection of the tours”. They can hop on, get this link and again dive into the live, fit out and step the floor of their own leisure and really get a sense of the quality of that fit out. They can see the view lines and what that typically does, is really brings the opportunity to life and what we’ve found then is that we get a lot more engagement with that tenant and typically will see them wanting to come and have a look at that property. So, it's a way of just, I guess of teasing the tenant to come and have a look at the property – it has been really powerful. 

ST:
What has been the client feedback on plans or virtual viewings?

SP:
Pretty much all of our clients have adopted the technology. Everybody now is saying that to be relevant in this market and to be up to date with technology having a virtual tour of your space is an essential element of marketing now. So, we've seen it so quickly adopted, before COVID, I would say that it was very rarely used, the virtual tours. It was seen a little bit more as gimmicky. Now it is absolutely seen as an essential element of any marketing campaign to ensure that your property has virtual tours and any of those spaces are presented virtually. 

ST:
And even if we do go back to the way things were, I guess, do you think that this technology will be used going forwards? 

SP:
Oh yes, 100%. As I said, it's taking what we used to send through with just a one dimensional floor plan to that next stage of three dimensional so it really brings the opportunity to life and tenants they're able to walk the fit out and really get a sense of it. So, I think that it's going to be something that is just going to be a given when we're sending out information to tenants they received the listing sheet with the financials, but they receive a virtual tour of the floor as well. 

ST:
I'm interested to hear what else you might have seen in the market or what you think might be missing. 

SP:
Well, I guess the other pieces that COVID brought up is going to be around building technology and workplace design. I guess we’re probably at the infancy at the moment. A lot of owners now, especially with some of the newer developments that we're working on, are now looking at how they can future proof that asset against future pandemics. It's all about frictionless entries with the mechanical capacities of the building, how much fresh air that they could bring in. It's about dovetailing that piece of tech and building design with what occupiers are going to want from their workplace design. We'll probably start to see densities where they were tracking down to one to eight, start to track back up to one that one to 15 so it's going to be really interesting to see how that tech can marry in with that workplace design, you know there is going to be monitoring initiatives that could be done with building designs so that occupiers can monitor live densities that they're fit outs have been utilised at. 

Sanitation is also obviously going to be paramount with any type of building design. So, I think it's going to be quite interesting to see how that technology can assist with building design in the future and workplace design. 

ST:
What do you hope will change in the future? And what do you think we will keep using? 

SP:
Well, I think what we will be 100% be continuing to use will be the virtual technology throughout COVID we've seen, is just such a powerful tool with developing engagement with occupiers and it's not going to be something that’s a nice to have with a marketing campaign, it’s going to be an absolute essential that you need to have with every single marketing campaign, is that you need to have a virtual tour of your spaces that you're going to be marketing. 

I think the other thing that's going to be an essential moving forward is the way that we conduct business meetings, and I think more and more that they will be done by the Zoom forum. Not saying that there's never going to be a need to do face to face because there absolutely will be, but I think some more of the meetings now we'll be able to do via Zoom, which is just going to enhance the sort of flexibility for employees. 

ST:
Well, thank you so much for speaking with me today, I really enjoyed that conversation. Thanks for listening, to Talking property with CBRE. If you liked the show and want to check out more, visit cbre.com.au/talkingproperty or subscribe with Apple podcasts.