THE FUTURE OF REAL ESTATE ANDREW BAUM’S LONG CAREER IN BOTH ACADEMIA AND REAL ESTATE PRACTICE HAS SEEN TREMENDOUS CHANGE. HE SHARES SOME OF THINGS HE’S LEARNED IN THE PAST, AND WHAT HE THINKS MAY BE COMING IN THE FUTURE.
R
eal estate is an industry that is going to be increasingly challenged
Data is the new oil
and improved by technology, says Andrew Baum. Aside from
Data is becoming more valuable in all sectors of the
working in the real estate business, Andrew has had a long career
economy, but in property it is helping to move where the
in academia as a Professor at Oxford University, where one topic he
power lies, explains Andrew, especially on the commercial
has focused on is the future of real estate. An enormous amount of
side: “The traditional way that the real estate market works
money has been invested in proptech, and some of this will change how the industry
is that you get relatively well capitalised landlords and
works, he says: “Exactly what gets disrupted or accelerated first is a matter of
relatively undercapitalised tenants, so the power tended to
opinion. There’s a huge amount of activity. Billions and billions of US dollars have
rest with the landlords, financial institutions, wealthy
been invested in property technology solutions from the very, very big and ambitious
families, estates, and so on. And the tenants, although they
to the very, very small and detailed”.
were sometimes very wealthy corporations, often they
Andrew also works in consultancy, and this covers both those big ideas and the
weren’t, and it meant that landlords had a bit more power
precise ones. He mentions that he is meeting with a company that wants to create a
in the market. You’d end up with long leases, tenants
Facebook for houses: “That’s a very big proposition, where everything you do in your
having a lot of responsibilities, not necessarily having
house, all of your bills and everything, is connected to a site. You can sell your house
security, and so on. That has changed now, I think. I think
through the site, you can let your house through the site, and you can run your bills
there’s been a significant change, which means that
there. That will lead to a lot of property data. That’s the ambitious end of the scale.
tenants are more empowered. If you’re a potential tenant
And then yesterday, I had a call with another company I work with, which is very
of a shop, for example, in Dublin, there’s a lot of empty
precise and detailed, which is simply about taking data from property spreadsheets
shops now because of the Amazon effect. So if you’re a
and organising them in the right way, so that people don’t have to retype data into
retailer, you’ve now got a bit more power against the
Excel spreadsheets”.
landlord. That means that landlords are now having to think
INTERVIEW Colm Quinn Journalist and Sub-Editor, Think Media
SURVEYORS JOURNAL Volume 12, Issue 2, Summer 2022
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