For companies that are reporting on a calendar year and have completed their audit, CFOs have recently received or will shortly receive a management letter from their auditors. The management…
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It’s been just over a year since the U.S. experienced a series of lockdowns in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Lessees and lessors have had to quickly adjust their strategies to…
Landlords and tenants are struggling to reconcile 2020 building operating expenses and service charges in an atmosphere of highly irregular occupancy and operational adjustments.
With the ASC 842 deadline for private companies looming, there are several things private organizations can do to set themselves up for success.
Real estate, as an industry, has been more accepting of technology’s benefits to the trade in recent years. A growing number of real estate companies and professionals have embraced tech…
Commercial real estate overhead has never faced more scrutiny. While today’s highly agile workforce brings with it a newfound level of productivity, there are various impacts and considerations felt across…
These are the considerations that financial professionals should keep in mind to ensure they are prepared for changes that may emerge due to COVID-19.
To survive and thrive in today’s new norm, these same companies now need to evaluate how these decisions will continue to affect the leasing landscape, and what that means for…
Article: Uncover an unlikely profit center: transforming lease compliance into savings opportunities
This past year, organizations across the globe have faced unprecedented challenges as they navigate new business models and virtual work environments. For many, it’s been a race against the clock…
Another day, another breathless survey repeating what we’ve been hearing for the last year: work-from-home is more than just a passing trend, and it just may be here to stay….
Commercial office leases were on the chopping block last year as companies grappled with the impacts of COVID. Of the companies surveyed in a new Visual Lease report, 50% received…
How has COVID-19 impacted the road to compliance and the accounting industry? Visual Lease’s Joe Fitzgerald discusses why FASB has proposed new changes to its lease guidelines and what it…
As the accounting profession navigates the challenges brought on by COVID-19, FASB shifted the deadline to grant private companies more breathing room to achieve compliance with its major lease accounting…
In the current economic environment, businesses are searching for new ways to save cash. However, they often overlook one critical aspect of their business: real estate management. Real estate leasing…
In the current economic environment, businesses are searching for new ways to save cash. However, they often overlook one critical aspect of their business: real estate management. Real estate leasing…
Since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak, commercial tenants have fallen behind on rent payments as cities across the U.S. have been on full or partial lockdown for months on…
In attempt to become compliant with the new lease accounting standards, particularly ASC 842 and IFRS 16, there are many intricate details that accountants often have questions about. Today we’ll…
With the new FASB/IFRS lease accounting standards, significantly more assets and liabilities must now appear on the balance sheet. Yet, some businesses still aren’t using lease accounting software to help…
Until recently, Corporate Real Estate (CRE) and Accounting departments had little reason to talk to each other. ht CRE is primarily responsible for obtaining space and managing facilities-related issues. The…
Over the past few years, Visual Lease has helped hundreds of public companies achieve compliance with the new lease accounting standards. For many organizations, real estate lease accounting turned out…
An agile leased real estate portfolio supports an agile workforce Business agility is a paramount goal for today’s business enterprises. Given the rapid pace of change, and the shortening of…
Information technology is revolutionizing CRE Technology is transforming everything today and this is true for commercial real estate technology as well.
Back in the 1980’s I was a manager in the corporate real estate department of Xerox Corporation. One of my assignments was to participate in a quality improvement program called…
Why measure and optimize equipment lease performance? Most large, global organizations have some form of management and oversight in place for their real estate leases. After all, those leases represent…
Over sixteen years ago while a Gartner analyst, I launched a series of research reports on the subject of virtual teaming. Because of mobile technology and the growth of telework,…
The upcoming FASB accounting changes are not only a challenge for corporate accounting teams, but also for the commercial real estate group. To get you up to speed, here’s an…
In my last couple of blog posts, I covered the basic elements of real estate market analysis and the real estate market cycle. In case you missed them: Real Estate…
FASB lease accounting is changing the game not only for companies with leases, but also for the real estate brokers who help them to manage their property leases. Now, in…
In my last blog post, I covered the basic elements of real estate market analysis. In case you missed it: Real Estate Market Analysis: A Primer for CRE Executives In…
For corporate real estate decision-makers, will the new lease accounting standards make an already challenging job even more difficult? You already have many factors to consider when choosing locations, negotiating…
What CRE can learn from a real estate market analysis report Virtually all real estate service firms offer some type of real estate market analysis. These reports are typically offered…
We know you’ve got questions about the IFRS and FASB changes related to the new lease accounting standards. Even if you’ve carefully reviewed FASB ASC 842 and IFRS 16, it’s…
Organizational Challenges & the New Lease Accounting Standards There are many organizational models that are used to manage corporate real estate. Companies adopt primarily two models: centralized and decentralized. In…
What is beacon technology? There’s been increasing interest in what is known as beacon technology. Usually associated with retail marketing, beacon technology first emerged in 2013. Today the technology is…
There’s been a growing buzz throughout the tech world about blockchain technology and its associated topic of Bitcoin, the blockchain enabled digital currency. The specific characteristics of blockchain make it…
The CoreNet Global Summit is a forum for discussion of the most important ideas, strategies and tactics that leading Corporate Real Estate teams employ to meet goals and increase their…
As organizations worldwide prepare to transition to the new lease accounting standards, FASB ASC 842 & IASB IFRS 16, accounting teams are anticipating a heavy workload to prepare for the…
How do you organize your CRE department? The structure of the CRE organization should directly correspond to key processes such as leasing, construction, design and facilities management. Organizational structure varies by the size of the real estate portfolio, the type of industry, the level of outsourcing and the geographic dispersion of the real estate portfolio.
Perhaps one of the most critical aspects of corporate real estate management is the subject of process management and the software that supports it. Process management is a major subject in the topic of quality management. It has been a topic that has dominated management subjects for decades. Most software applications have specific functionality that addresses process management; particularly around work flow.
In several of my blog postings over the last two years I made reference to the subject of outsourcing CRE functions. But my references were brief. So over the next several blog entries, I plan to delve deeply into the subject. My plan is to first discuss the general pros and cons of outsourcing while providing the rationale for outsourcing various CRE functions. I will then focus on three service areas: lease transaction services, design services, and property management services. I’ll also touch on other activities such as facility management and physical security.
Realcomm, the technology focused real estate web site, recently published an article entitled “The Data is Coming In: Corporate America is Using Less Than 50% of Its Real Estate.” This is no surprise; I remember from my own experience that our offices were nearly 30%-50% vacant at any one time.
From time to time clients raise the question of the difference between corporate real estate and facilities management. In essence, they’re asking why we have two different professional designations since they both seem to have the same responsibilities. But the two professions have distinct differences and responsibilities. Here we explore these differences and attempt to bring clarity to the issue.
In March of this year, Sodexo released a study of the corporate real estate profession, focusing on its image and value as a viable career path. Having practiced in the profession for over twenty-five years, I experienced first hand the challenges and rewards of corporate real estate as a junior manager, a senior executive and as a broker and consultant . For many years, corporate real estate didn’t enjoy the cache or prestige of other corporate functions such as marketing, finance, and even Information Technology. But this is changing with the advent of new leasing standards and workplace strategies. So it was with this personal back ground I took a special interest in the Sodexo survey and report.
In a recent article in the New York Times, the report described how corporate America is moving from suburban campuses back to urban markets, despite the higher cost of central business district office space.
A key process for the CRE executive is overseeing the site selection process, particularly for major office, data center, or manufacturing sites. I’m going to focus on office site selection since this typically represents the most frequent type of leasing actions.
In the last several Blog posts, I’ve explored the various steps in becoming a CRE executive. Today I want to address the question of CRE organization. There is no one organizational model that is ideal. But there are various structures thatfit the needs of most business entities.
In this blog entry I would like to introduce the topic of CRE leadership and management. I hope to explore the topic over the next several weeks with the hope that these personal observations will be useful to those readers who aspire to make corporate real estate management a long term career.
It was early summer of 1995, and I was aboard a French SST Concord traveling at roughly Mach3 from New York to Paris..
During my tenure as head of real estate I always began the new year with a few resolutions that would become goals for the year ahead. These were typically above and beyond department objectives for the year and represented personal goals for some kind of improvement. Here are a few that I recall..
With the New Year it’s a good time to take stock of the corporate real estate domain and consider the challenges facing the managerial profession responsible for the corporation’s real estate assets and services in the year ahead. Here are five major challenges if dealt with effectively will determine in part the success of corporate real estate in 2016.
In this morning’s New York Times, it was reported that Goldman Sachs recently consolidated from three floors to two in its major Manhattan office tower. The Times reports that “the changes in real estate have helped Goldman reduce its cost by 17 percent since 2010.” This is yet another example of the value in corporate real estate strategic planning and why I wanted to spend a bit more time on the subject.
In the last blog entry we reviewed how the strategic planning process evolved from forming the planning team, benchmarking performance indicators, and setting priority objectives. Outlined below is what the strategic plan looks like:
