How much of the building data your portfolio already collects ever reaches a valuation? It is a fair question, and one that sat underneath every conversation at our recent Lunch and Learn, “From Data to NOI: The Hidden Value in Your Assets”. Stuart Paterson, our Head of Impact, was joined by three people whose roles and expertise put them close to that question from different vantage points: Jan Germs, ESG Manager for Europe at Mapletree; Rose Newton, Head of Impact for Europe at Harrison Street; and Parag Cameron-Rastogi, Director of Real Asset Analytics at GRESB.
What connected them was not a shortage of information. It was something more useful for your portfolio to hear: The portfolios turning building data into real value are the ones collecting data that is reliable enough to trust and granular enough to act on.
Granular Data That Earns its Keep
Jan runs ESG across Mapletree’s European portfolio, and he brought the clarity of someone who works with the numbers every day. Where the data is granular and automated, it does real work: It points capex at the assets that need it, catches leaks at the incoming supply before they run up a bill, and lets one asset be compared fairly against another. The foundation for all of it, he noted, is reliability. “The issue is not usually a lack of data, it is the reliability of the data,” he told the room, which is why Mapletree has moved from manual readings toward automated, smart-metered inputs it can stand behind.
Reliable numbers turn into savings where someone owns them on the ground. “You can have all the data in the world, but if you don’t have an on-site team that acts on it, it won’t deliver any savings.” The value, in other words, sits in the loop between good data and the people acting on it, and closes fastest where that ownership is strongest.
Turning Granular Data into Value you can Defend
Rose has helped build one of the more rigorous impact programmes in real estate, and it showed in how naturally she connects sustainability work to value. Harrison Street, she explained, deliberately named the function impact rather than ESG: “We don’t consider ourselves the people assigned to oversee the E, the S and the G. We consider ourselves responsible for actually making an impact.” That framing runs right through to the numbers on a valuation.
She shared two moments where asset-level data earned its place in front of valuers and buyers. In one, sensor-level data on energy use fed directly into third-party, verified year-end valuations. In another, when a buyer tried to chip the price of a student asset on the claim that its heating could not hold a comfortable temperature, unit-level room-temperature data across two heating seasons was enough to prove otherwise and protect the price, seeing off a material reduction the buyer had sought. Her wider observation should reassure any asset manager watching compliance costs climb: “The ground between value-add and compliance is constantly being eroded.” Granular data you can stand behind is quietly moving from a reporting cost to a way of defending value.
Data That Runs the Asset, Not Just the Report
Parag has an unusually wide view of the market, sitting across thousands of assets globally and helping author the framework that will shape the next decade of real asset benchmarking. His most useful point for anyone building a data foundation was about purpose: What you report upward should simply be a summary of the granular data you already use to run the asset well. “You can’t use your annual energy consumption to make informed decisions. You need much more granular data.” Granular data, in his telling, is what drives the decision, and the report is really its by-product. He noted too that close to half of the assets submitted to GRESB still face structural barriers to accessing their own building data, a reminder of how much value stays locked up wherever that access is missing.
He also offered the line of the session, on what a benchmark can and cannot tell you. “GRESB is the map for sustainability”, he said, and the industry needs to “separate the map and the terrain”. Where the framework itself is heading is a bigger topic, and one we will come back to in a future post.
What Connects it All
The thread running through all three conversations was an encouraging one: The portfolios seeing real value are those turning reliable, granular data into decisions, and decisions into outcomes on the balance sheet. It is also the ground our own annual benchmarking report is built on, drawing on room-level data across 85,000 rooms and more than 54 billion data points. We will be sharing it in the coming weeks, with a few findings that may surprise you.
Our thanks to Jan, Rose and Parag for three genuinely candid perspectives. The full session, including the audience questions, is well worth your time.
Watch the full Lunch and Learn recording, here.