Commercial real estate decision makers are prioritizing technology and AI to advance sustainability goals according to new data from JLL in its Global Real Estate Technology Survey 2023.
It said real estate tech budgets were set to grow faster than investments in headcount, footprint and operating budgets as the industry turns to technology for data-driven insights that drive strategic value and increase revenue.
Sustainability tech will account for the largest share of planned increases in technology spend across the corporate real estate sector in the next 12 months as businesses race to Net Zero.
The JLL 2023 Global Real Estate Technology Survey was conducted by Meridian West during May and June 2023. The 1,006 decision-makers surveyed included over 600 CRE (corporate real estate) leaders at major occupiers and over 400 leaders at real estate investors, landlords and developers situated in 10 markets globally: Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, the UK, and the US.
JLL CTO, Yao Morin, said: ‘Digital transformation in CRE is now advancing so rapidly that decision-makers are leaning more on technology experts to understand how certain innovations can have a business impact and provide good ROI.’
Just one example is JLL GPT – the industry’s first generative AI large language model – developed so the agent’s real estate experts can supposedly deliver faster, ‘smarter’ insights to clients.
According to the survey, focus is shifting from remote working tools to in-office collaboration technology.
Health and wellbeing tech solutions rose in popularity and adoption, as did platforms to enable consolidated insights, and drive predictive management are also among the top adoption priorities.
Immersive workplace technology, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, is one of the top five technologies companies intend to adopt next.
‘Organizations are shifting their tech priorities from cost reduction to strategically improving their business,’ said Sharad Rastogi, CEO of Work Dynamics Technology.
Following sustainability tech, respondents pointed to artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI as the technologies expected to have the greatest impact on real estate over the next three years. Surprisingly, most conceded limited understanding of AI despite ranking it highly.
Among occupiers, 50% of companies employ more than 5,000 people globally. The respondents represent a range of industry sectors including technology, manufacturing, finance, professional services, retail, hospitality, and government.
Investor respondents are from a variety of operating models including investment managers and private equity, banks, REITs, real estate operating companies and developers.
