New to CRE? Upskill in CRE quickly here

Welcome!

If you are new to CRE, this is for you…

Commercial real estate (CRE) is an amazing asset class, and we hope you love your time here. Warning, CRE is addictive.

Part of the appeal is that CRE is an exclusive club. Entrance to this club requires a blend of technical and theoretical knowledge. To manage your expectations, it will take at least two years before you feel confident. So don’t be tough on yourself while you learn.

Ask questions – you are not expected to know everything, and the faster you can upskill in CRE, the sooner you can be productive.

And a last point, CRE is attractive because you will never stop learning. You will always find new frontiers to explore.

Resources for theoretical knowledge

Here is an index of links for you to work through. Reading these will help you to upskill in CRE fast.

Dictionary of CRE terms and principles

(please let us know if any terms are missing, or could be made clearer) – below is a diverse list terms for you to get familar with

• Agency relationship
• Building component (unpacking the complicated data structures in CRE)
• Cap (capitalisation) rate
• Complex space
• Corporate real estate services
• Expenses included in gross rentals
• GLA
• Holding company
• Land assembly (a complicated property sales / acquisition project)
• Lease abstraction
• Operating costs
• Parking ratio
• Property ownership
• Sale and leaseback deal
• Shadow space
• Tenant installation allowance
• Vendor finance
• Weighted average lease expiry or WALE

Some other principles / reading

• Important differences between CRE and resi
• The different space types in CRE
• What is a property? (Handling for sectional title / strata)
• Geospatial data explained
• SEO unpacked
• Considerations when signing a lease agreement
  • Flexibility pointers
  • Financial and legal considerations
  • Soft factors
• Commercial property data insights and thoughts
  • Some CRE myths busted
  • Commercial property data, and where it is going
• The Gmaven sync explained

Upskill in CRE recommendation: seek practical knowledge

Our best advice: simply dive in and start using Gmaven.

You will notice our approach, driven by a focus on data quality, is to avoid free-text.

This is great news for you, because it means you can learn as you go, without risk of “breaking” anything.

A good way to start is by offering to help out colleagues on overdue data housekeeping projects (these always exist, in any organisation). Examples of such projects:

• Cleaning dirty data in parts of Gmaven
• Doing some data capture
• Loading documents onto properties or units
• Capturing lease information

(This is a good use of your time early on, because you won’t, initially be that productive, and the data capture gives you a “crash course” in learnings. So you will get to put some adding value “runs on board”, grow some relationships, and possibly get some ideas as you look at the data)

We would recommend fleshing information out on properties – for example

• Updating property ownership information
• Adding property attributes for industrial or office properties, at either a parent or child level (this will probably require you to inspect the properties)
• Capturing tenants on properties
• Loading images from inspections you may have made

Good luck, and have fun!