Corporate Real Estate Ahead

Read and heed...

If there is a single point to come out of a recent CoreNet Global sponsored Gallup poll, it's that Corporate America will require more flexibility with its real estate as it moves into the future. The poll was undertaken to assess the impact of technology and other key issues on employees and companies as we approach 2010.

According to the survey, how and where people work will continue to be driven by a company's overall business strategy and will be heavily influenced by traditional factors such as the location of key markets, sources of supply, labor, transportation, communications, utilities, incentives and other issues. However, as the world continues to become networked, the role and weight of these factors can fundamentally alter the structure of the company as well as where it chooses to locate, the nature of its assets and the configuration of its portfolio.

Specific predictions for corporate real estate in 2010 include the following:

-Ninety percent of the Fortune 500 companies will adopt "triple bottom line reporting," which means that companies will be measured by social responsibility, environmental sustainability and profit.

-In the networked world of 2010, corporations will require less space to perform effectively.

-According to the Gallup Organization survey, right now just seven percent have workers spending 25 to 50 percent of their time in unassigned office space. By 2010, 21 percent of companies will have their employees working remotely up to half the time.

-The work environment will be defined more as connectivity - a network of places both geographic and virtual - so that commercial real estate executives will manage networks as much as occupancy in facilities.

-Worker productivity will be measured in real time, thus allowing for real estate decisions to be made more quickly and more effectively. Portfolios will have to be flexible in terms of the lease agreement, financing and the ability to substitute assets during the lease term.

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