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Do you KNOW how good your property data is?
We are interested to know what property owners are doing to check whether that their databases are up to date and accurate. Being able to tell your investors and lenders how good your management information is must be a great marketing tool. Anyone care to share that information?
Tags: best practice, data, investment, loans, oscre, property, real estate
Views: 11
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Richard Harris on -
How good is your property data? The case for an Investment Property Register
Real estate has benefited from the trusting and often naively unquestioning acquiescence of investors. As property and financial markets start moving again, the strategic long-term investors will be much more demanding in what they require from their interlocutors and the marketplace infrastructure itself.
Within the economic chaos there was/is a crisis of transparency. Many guessed (and some knew) that things were not always as they seemed to be. The writing was on the wall, but it wasn’t in the balance sheets. And, even now, the information that could help property investors paint a more truthful picture is still not readily available or arrives belatedly in limited, aggregate or hearsay form.
Many claim that the property market has never been so transparent. Surely it is well supplied with specialist research companies, broker research departments, index and benchmark providers, well-intentioned industrial and professional associations, valuation standards and codes of practice?
No, these may all be necessary, but they are not sufficient. This is the moment, not for more small steps towards transparency, but for one great leap – an Investment Property Register.
It would be an open platform for owners and managers (and others, both public and private) to display certain, certifiable and comparable information (financial, architectural, contractual, transactional, valuational, environmental, …) relating to specific property assets, in the belief that there is more to gain in improving investor confidence, than to lose in commercial dealings.
Quality is in the eye of the beholder. The marketplace will only know how good is the management information when it can look at it in the light of day.
Good data? - if you've got it, flaunt (some of) it.
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Permalink Reply by Duke Long on -
Richard,
I would love to see this. Getting my popcorn, sitting back and waiting for the info to flow.I may be waiting a long while!
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Permalink Reply by Richard Harris on
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Duke, why do you think it might be a a long wait?
Is it because you believe that those who have the info will never open the flow?
or because there is insufficient demand for useful information?
Or is there something so special about the real estate marketplace?
Anyway, if you'd really love to see it, don't just sit there eating your popcorn!
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Permalink Reply by Richard Harris on
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Thank you Duke and thank you CREOpoint for introducing us.
I've read your three articles and, correct me if I'm wrong, you say ...
- Progress towards data transparency is being made in the residential marketplace.
- Less so in the commercial marketplace
- IT in general and Google in particular facilitate greater sharing of "good data"
Agreed.
For me, the question is whether a natural tendency towards transparency has sufficient force to reshape the marketplace by removing the hearsay of third party data (data?) suppliers and replacing it with traceable and meaningful information from proprietary sources.
And, for me, the answer must be yes and quite soon. As time passes it makes more sense to distribute real information at very low cost over the Internet, rather than continuing to invest in keeping it segregated and imprecise in a plethora of incompatible and sometimes less than impartial data depots.
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Permalink Reply by Duke Long on
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Richard,
Simple. I agree! Question to you, how can I help make this happen?????
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Permalink Reply by Alan Edgar on
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One of the keys to transparency is the ability to federate data, in near realtime, from many sources in both push and pull models with confidence that the results will be available, accurate and understandable. Don't believe me? - answer these test questions:
1. What company or agency would you trust to host an 'Investment Property Register'? If the market is "well supplied with specialist research companies, broker research departments, index and benchmark providers, well-intentioned industrial and professional associations, valuation standards and codes of practice" why is it that these entities aren't sufficient? Could it be that they all have commercial interests, or that they have individual proprietary information semantic, structure and transport requirements which, combined with similar conditions in the originating compaies results in an overly daunting environment for information federation? What if they could agree on a neutral standard for moving the information around and then each just focus on innovating within their core products or services?
2. If one did trust this entity, what latency would one accept in the availability of Register data? Entities today that accept raw transaction data in order to aggregate benchmarks or summary reference sources typically prepare annual or semi-annual indexes and these require a significant amount of dedicated labor to extract, prepare, receive, clean and normalize the data - all before the value-added activity of analysis. This is a problem since it seems like validation of transactional data would need to be near realtime to be useful.
Distributing information over the Internet, on demand, safely, regardless of native file format or originating application is not a new thing. I did it this morning when I scheduled my airline flights and again when I transferred money from one bank account to another. This didn't happen however using paper-based transactions, application or vendor-specific file formats, or even ad-hoc file-based exchanges between trading partners - which is how much of the real estate industry currently does business. Travel and financial institutions use agreed, neutrally governed industry standards for information semantics, structure, and web-based transport services.
Lastly, RE: "how can I make this happen?????". OSCRE provides a global method and platform for real estate business and information technology experts to come together under a neutral umbrella to agree, develop, facilitate demonstrations and then govern open real estate interoperability standards. OSCRE doesn't 'own' your software or your data - a voluntary consortium group (championed by and/or including you) works out the parts that many otherwise competitive parties need to agree to and then provides neutral governance as the standards mature through use. The only way you can 'make it happen' is to become actively engaged. Which market concerns are most pressing? Who else besides yourself have the same problems; could share the cost of solutions including demonstrations of effectiveness? Calculate what it is costing in non value-added expense to operate in the current environment. Eliminating non value-added costs will more than pay for interoperable solutions even before considering the intangibles we all value such as pride.
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Permalink Reply by Richard Harris on
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Alan,
In answer to your question 1, I'd trust anyone if the data were certified by its original supplier. I'd probably be happier if the platform carried a global brand name such as the WSJ, Bloomberg, DMGT or Google. As for question 2, I'd accept any latency. Those who have the data can supply as much or as little as they wish. It just has to be the documentable truth! I wouldn't be worrying about problems of realtime validation of transactional data at the outset. That would be something to look forward to.
Rightly you tell us OSCRE's essential role, but that it can only be part of the solution. As you put it, OSCRE brings together RE and IT experts under a neutral umbrella to implement interoperability standards. So OSCRE does not and should not take into consideration interests beyond those of the consortium members.
My thesis is that real estate marketplace would perform a greater service to the collectivity were more and better information available to a much wider audience. This will happen only when those who have the data are willing to put it in a comprehensible and comparable format (thanks to OSCRE) and then put it somewhere where all (maybe they have to pay) can see it.
I'd just touch on two subjects you raise:
1. Value-added activity of analysis Because the data is held so tightly, much of the value-added analysis can only be carried out by trusted specialists, who reap the benefit of the "value added". Transparency would really require them to add value, rather than trade on the exclusivity of the information they hold. And transparency would allow the financial analysts to carry out the analyses they see fit, rather than have to accept the pre-packaged aggregations generally available.
2. Normalisation Does "standardisation" (what OSCRE does) help eliminate the need for normalisation? Or is all that normalisation the result of the subjectivities that would be minimised by greater transparency?
To sum up, I agree that inter-operability is a good thing, but better still if it is a stepping stone to wider transparency and true "pluri-operability".
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Permalink Reply by Stephen Spooner on -
No matter what the purpose, surely someone has a way of actually testing the quality of their data? If I were an auditor I would take samples and test them against the documents that underly that data. This is not a good way of creating anything other than a snapshot and is very time consuming, that's why auditors like it! It's like doing purchase due diligence every day.
I know what I would do but I wonder how many are relying on tenants, landlords or lawyers to tell them. Until we can rely on data accuracy we will struggle to improve liquidity in all real estate markets. Do we need a quality mark for data?
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