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We talked to Rob Teel, Vice President, Yardi Global Solutions, about his thoughts on current trends in investment management, specifically commercial real estate portfolios.
What’s hot?
As a result of the global financial crisis, investors and portfolio managers are taking a heightened interest in three things: Cycle time, transparency, and risk analysis, before and after committing large amounts of capital to investment managers.
Let’s break it down.
Cycle time – The time between the end of the quarter and the production of investors’ returns and reports is crunch time. Shortening that cycle from weeks to days is a crucial component of keeping investors happy. Banks and investors are now asking for more frequent valuations of real property, which can be costly and time-consuming. Investors are also looking for forecasts, so they can anticipate the value of their investment in the years ahead. Yardi VMF creates full portfolio valuations, in an automated, accurate and repeatable way, quarter after quarter, or any frequency desired.
Transparency – Investors and investment boards now want a heightened level of detail about how their commercial investment properties are doing, down to the level of tenant health. They aren’t satisfied with the pretty pictures of the assets traditionally included in quarterly reports, and want to drill down to find outstanding receivables and other property-specific information. Yardi Investor Portal provides a technology tool for frequently-published, data rich reports.
Risk analysis – Successful investment management means monitoring a portfolio closely for potential trouble spots. Portfolio managers can choose the attributes they’ll monitor to keep close tabs on portfolio assets. Producing the best possible business intelligence platform for risk management is one of the goals of Yardi Orion, which uses Microsoft Sharepoint built on an OLAP data cube to give instant access to investment data.
Wait, I can’t use Excel to manage my clients’ portfolios?
In a word, no. Investors and institutional investment management boards – which oversee multi-million dollar funds on behalf of private individuals and trusts, retirement systems, and other investment entities, are asking for more intelligent business software solutions to ensure that their investments are monitored wisely. Investment managers need to account for accounting controls, risk controls, operational controls with a smart technology choice. You will not get institutional funding if you are running on an Excel spreadsheet.
What’s next?
The investment management industry should be focused on automating all aspects of the real estate life cycle, from end to end. That should include property operations, acquisitions, dispositions, monitoring, and risk analysis. All of the processes that are required can be automated, from the time you acquire that asset and attract new investors that help you acquire it, to the time you’re monitoring it, looking for outliers and patching up the health of your portfolio, to the time you need to dispose of it, get the right value for it and close it out.
