If you ask what Gmaven team members do, all will have different answers. If you ask why, you will pick up one common thread: the desire to make things better. How do we do this? We deliver efficiency, and we make things fairer. Efficiency to those hard-working professionals in CRE businesses. Fairer outcomes to all – inside and out the industry.
Me personally? I joined commercial real estate (CRE) in 2006 as an investment sales / capital markets broker, when I was a young, green and enthusiastic chartered accountant. CRE hooked me then, and I’m still here. This industry runs on data, and is incredibly complex. And, precisely because of this complexity, the industry is backward in its use of technology. This creates fertile grounds to solve real pain, provide serious efficiency and make a difference. Gmaven is how I contribute to that overdue revolution.
Why do doctors get respect, but CRE brokers don’t?
It’s because CRE is complex. It’s because CRE professionals operate in a position of trust (much like a mechanic orsoftware consultant), and take advantage of people. It’s tough for outsiders to evaluate quality, and easy for outsiders to misunderstand things. And expectation gaps are misinterpreted by these outsiders as attempts by industry insiders to muddy the waters.
This is unfair. But it’s also a reality.
Like all industries, CRE’s professionals live on a continuum.
On one end you have the hard-working, highly skilled, experienced, conscientious professionals.
Meanwhile, on the other, there are the minority of cowboys ruining it for everyone.
The problem: it is very difficult for industry outsiders to tell who is who.
So all industry players get tarred with the same brush.
At best, talented people inside of this industry don’t get the credit and prestige they deserve. At worst, outsiders engage with CRE professionals on a guilty-until-proven-innocent basis.
As a result, the incredible CRE industry is not attractive to young, talented people. Young up and coming commerce professionals aspire to be investment bankers, fund managers, lawyers, consultants. They do not aspire to be CRE professionals. And so much-needed talent is lost to the industry.
Brokers and CRES providers are highly skilled specialists, who can help good businesses make great decisions about their big ticket costs and investments – their real estate. Property owners and managers provide the four walls that most businesses in the world need to run on. Valuers help banks lend with comfort and at fair prices. CRE analysts use their smarts to advise Jane Doe on listed property investments. Commercial property debt funders inject the capital into the system that helps it run. Insurers are there to pick up the pieces when calamity strikes, and help everyone sleep easier.
The first lever is education. This blog and related Gmaven outputs like our dictionary and FAQs aims to empower industry outsiders to understand and respect the complexity of this industry. To equip industry outsiders with information to evaluate the quality of service they receive – and to separate the good guys from “the bad and the ugly” cowboys.
The second lever is technology. Gmaven’s technology, in delivering the gift of improved efficiency to good CRE professionals, can educate industry outsiders, through their actions, where “the bar” of professional CRE excellence is. Such technology allows the good guys to cover more ground, to honour the trust placed in them, and to deliver superior customer service.
The third lever is data. Where data is structured, more transparent, and available, the good guys win. The best players love a fair fight, and are not afraid of operating in daylight. Gmaven strives to empower the best CRE professionals with accurate data, so that outcomes can be fair.
This is what inspires us and drives us here every day. As the popular, often misattributed, saying goes:
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away”
For us is there is powerful meaning and purpose behind effecting positive, and long-overdue change, to an inefficient (but massive – c.$33T) industry. And it’s certainly not easy. And we make mistakes. But what keeps us going is the hope, in the short time we are alive, that we can make things better for many fellow people we may never meet, for a long time to come.
In a long-overdue industry first, PropTech is now delivering professionally-designed, automated vacancy schedules to the CRE industry. You time-starved CRE professionals can now get your vacancy schedules to work as hard as you do, giving your vacant space the best chance of finding the right tenant.
Good news – CRE professionals can now seamlessly get their stock for sale or to let onto the listing platforms. With one click of a button. These data flows are now automated, making CRE more efficient. Say goodbye to double capture.
How the best CRE brokerages are applying the economic principle of opportunity cost to automate, outsource and focus. The result: higher profits, happier staff. We go from the theoretical to the practical, unpacking this in hard numbers.
