Why real estate's next value opportunity lies in data

While digital technology has transformed many aspects of commercial real estate, building data is often still distributed through site visits, physical logbooks, spreadsheets, emails and disconnected reporting processes.

The challenge is not simply administrative inefficiency but a structural limitation on how effectively buildings are understood, managed, upgraded, maintained and valued.

Consider an industrial estate where a property manager spends days each month undertaking manual utility meter readings for tenant billing and portfolio reporting.

For large portfolios, the time burden, cost and potential for human error become significant. Valuable resources are diverted from strategic asset management towards repetitive data collection activities.

Trustek's audit data suggests that fewer than half of commercial buildings in the UK have smart metering across electricity, gas and water services, meaning that many portfolios rely heavily on manual data capture. 

Even where utility data is available from suppliers, it often provides little insight into how, where or why energy is consumed in a building.

The analogue building therefore affects operational costs. As investors, lenders, occupiers and asset managers increasingly rely on performance data, access to clear building insights is becoming essential for optimisation, benchmarking and assessing future value.

Each party makes important commercial decisions about the asset that can either enhance or erode its value.

Historically, asset managers have relied on experience, relationships and periodic reporting to demonstrate performance. This is no longer sufficient. 

Without reliable data, stakeholders are effectively being asked to take an owner's word for how a building is performing.

Data provides the evidence behind performance. It translates operational excellence into measurable commercial outcomes, supporting net operating income, asset resilience, occupier satisfaction, maintenance efficiency and investment attractiveness, while helping alignment with financial disclosure frameworks and sustainability-linked loans.

Whether measuring energy consumption, maintenance expenditure or environmental performance, data enables informed decision-making and greater confidence in asset quality.

This has become increasingly important as environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosures move from voluntary towards market expectation and, in some cases, regulatory requirement.

At the same time, investors, lenders and asset owners are using artificial intelligence and large language models to assess asset performance.

Access to accurate, structured asset-level data is becoming a prerequisite for investment decisions and for establishing viable upgrade strategies.

A challenge remains: few buildings operate with the same technology stack, making meaningful comparison difficult.

This is why organisations such as Trustek are engaging with RICS to establish standardised frameworks such as the International Building Operational Standard for assessing building data maturity and performance.  

As the industry evolves, data is becoming more than an operational tool; it is emerging as a core component of asset value.

However, a truly digital building is one where technology generates, captures and communicates meaningful data to the right stakeholders, enabling better decisions and improved outcomes throughout the asset lifecycle.

The most successful digital buildings share five common characteristics.

• Measurement of comfort as a performance indicator: rather than relying on anecdotal feedback, digital buildings can establish a comfort score, tracking how frequently the building operates within optimal temperature, lighting and environmental conditions. Conversations shift from 'we think the building is comfortable' to 'the building achieved optimal comfort conditions during 94% of occupied hours'.
• Delivery of operational transparency: building issues are logged, tracked and resolved through digital workflows. Energy and water consumption are monitored in near real-time, improvements are evidenced, and performance communicated to investors, occupiers and regulators. This creates a trusted record of asset performance, supporting both reporting and value creation.
• Health and well-being visibility: indoor air quality, CO₂ concentration, humidity and thermal comfort metrics are monitored and made visible to everyone from facilities managers to occupiers. This creates transparency and helps users better understand their environment.
• Occupier engagement: digital platforms can connect occupiers with amenities, building services, sustainability initiatives and each other, transforming tenants from passive occupants into active participants in a building community.
• Cybersecurity: consideration is given to managing physical cyber risk, supported by structured workflows to monitor and manage risks, helping ensure operational resilience. 

The technology stack enabling these outcomes relies on multiple point solutions as well as the expertise of property and facilities management to drive true value from data insights.

These include resilient fibre connectivity, indoor mobile coverage and communal wi-fi, alongside automated meter reading, building and energy management systems, occupancy sensors, air quality monitors, leak detection technology and digital access control systems replacing traditional card access.

The challenge is that each building has a unique technology stack and no single provider can deliver all the required solutions.

However, these systems are increasingly being integrated into centralised platforms and dashboards that provide a single source of truth for building performance.

Technology alone does not guarantee success. The most common challenges in the digital transformation of buildings are not the technology itself but unclear operational objectives, integration challenges, inconsistent standards and cybersecurity shortcomings.

Buildings often become collections of disconnected technologies rather than intelligent assets. The most successful projects start with clear outcomes and build the digital ecosystem around them.

Before investing in sensors, platforms or dashboards, building owners should first identify existing systems, then the requirements of investors, occupiers, lenders, insurers, asset managers and operational teams.

This should focus on supporting asset performance, compliance, occupier experience and long-term value. Only once these outcomes are defined should technology selection begin.

For most of the industry, the greatest opportunity lies in retrofitting the existing analogue estate.

While new buildings can be designed with digital infrastructure from the outset, most commercial assets need to transition from fragmented, often manual systems to a connected, data-driven environment.

What we have identified in completing audits over the last five years is that knowledge of the operational technology currently in use in a building is distributed across operational stakeholders.

So, to first understand the existing technology, there needs to be collaboration between stakeholders to collate this information.

Once this audit has been completed, any existing gaps will be identified to ensure future solutions align with the asset's business plan and operational requirements.

From our experience, knowledge of the technology stack is typically distributed across multiple stakeholders' workflows, so to establish a strategy from the correct foundations, this knowledge must be centralised.

One common mistake by landlords is the vanity technology trap: installing systems that generate large volumes of data that nobody reviews, acts on or communicates.

In one Trustek-reviewed portfolio, a building had accumulated 32 systems over time. Through rationalisation and integration, this was reduced to 15, with onsite teams relying on just three core platforms for day-to-day functions.

A successful digital roadmap for transforming an analogue building into a digital one is typically phased in rather than being introduced in one go.

Such a plan begins with a baseline, i.e. completion of a digital audit of the building which consolidates existing systems by reviewing any duplications or silos and improves data quality by ensuring that the right stakeholders have access to the right data so that any gaps or priorities can be addressed.

A successful digital building's underlying digital infrastructure should bring together core datasets, including utility and energy performance information, building systems and asset information, operational and maintenance records, environmental and occupancy data, and financial and lifecycle cost inputs. 

The goal is to create an asset that can tell its performance story to the right audience, at the right time, in a language that they understand.

One James Street, W1 is a prime example of the benefits of deploying technology into an existing office building.

Prior to the building's redevelopment, data visibility on site was limited to the knowledge of onsite teams.

Following refurbishment work in 2025, both the landlord, operator and occupiers now have full transparency on the energy, air quality and tenant-level waste data for the building.

Providing data transparency to all stakeholders not only supports accreditations for the building – WELL Platinum, BREEAM In Use (Excellent), and an energy performance certificate B – but also negates the needs to agree green lease clauses during negotiations, thus expediting leasing transactions.

The transition from analogue to digital is no longer an ambition, but a commercial requirement. Occupier expectations rise, ESG disclosure requirements evolve, and investors, lenders, insurers and valuers are increasingly seeking greater visibility of asset performance.

As data has become more influential in investment and valuation decisions, RICS' ESG and sustainability in commercial property valuation professional standard now requires valuers to assess how ESG factors influence asset performance, risk and value using a defined global ESG KPI framework. 

These factors are reflected in key valuation inputs, meaning that the quality and availability of as-built and operational ESG data can directly affect valuation outcomes.

As a result, digital literacy around building performance is rapidly becoming a core competency for property professionals.

The starting point for property and facilities managers is measurement, as you cannot improve what you do not measure. Understanding the technology, systems and data in a building establishes the baseline for its improvement.

From there, owners can identify the most relevant issues and select from an increasingly mature marketplace of digital solutions.

While not every technology investment delivers an immediate financial return, many create value by improving occupier experience and well-being, operational efficiency and long-term asset attractiveness.

Importantly, not every building needs every technology. Success depends on both the owners and the operational teams having a clear strategy that aligns with their business objectives and focuses on outcomes rather than technology for technology's sake.

In an industry built on evidence-based valuation, the next evolution is clear: assets that cannot demonstrate performance through data will become increasingly difficult to benchmark, transact and value.