Real estate firms know their future success and survival will be driven by new technology, but when it comes to the race for digital talent, property is bringing up the rear. CBRE investigates.
Early indications from CBRE’s upcoming 2019 European Occupier Survey suggest that up to 50% of corporate real estate managers based in the UK expect to hire data scientists into the real estate function in the future.
Almost a quarter say they expect to hire digital transformation officers. With high numbers of occupiers looking to deploy technology more extensively over the next three years, I guess this is no real surprise.
Over the past few months, we have also been seeing a growing awareness from the European (indeed global) landlord and investor community in meeting the tech needs of occupiers.
Firms are already hiring more tech talent into their data and analytics teams, to deliver more data-driven investment decisions.
The real estate industry is therefore forecast, it would seem, to hire a lot more tech talent in the coming years, far beyond current levels. But, what base is the industry starting from? How do we compare with other industries? Using LinkedIn recruitment data, we have looked at the profile of IT employees working for real estate companies like CBRE in the UK.
CBRE’s Location Advisory team has done some digging and come up with the top five things you need to know:
- Real estate information technology employment lags the banking industry.
- There are remarkably few data scientists currently working for UK real estate firms. At a minimum, only 15.
- Real estate IT employees have older age profiles compared with other industries.
- Very few current real estate IT employees have degrees from top tech universities. Most hold qualifications from well-known real estate universities.
- London dominates real estate IT employment, when we know it probably doesn’t have to.
So, what next?
Like the banking industry, real estate will go through a digital and tech revolution. It is already happening and will only mature over the coming months and years.
More data scientists will be hired into corporate real estate businesses and functions, but that’s not the only way CRE’s tech offering will develop.
More and more companies will adopt a “build, buy, partner” strategy, which will enable flexibility in developing the best tech solutions depending on the stakeholder need at hand.
CRE tech talent is ripe for change and will undoubtedly flourish in 2019.
