One of the big trends happening in the property industry is real estate brands offering an array of services outside of the traditional expectation of leasing space. One of the freshest examples of this is Colliers International’s new “Neighborhood Curated by Colliers.” This new suite of services for their property management clients and their tenants.
Colliers partnered with The Layer Group, which allows companies to monetize and protect the opportunities that augmented reality real estate rights offer, Blackpoint Cyber to develop real estate programs that are specifically tailored for the challenges and requirements of commercial buildings by safeguarding sensitive data, Wirkn, a video-based job marketplace that helps retail brands find and retain shift-based employees across the country and Lane, a workplace experience platform, on a new tenant experience app, which brings world-class workplace experiences to every office.
To me, the thing that particularly stood at as a service above and beyond what most real estate companies would offer was their jobs marketplace. I asked Karen Whitt, President of real estate management services about this unique offering and she told me, “As part of the technology suite that we make available to our clients, Colliers is supporting both the local community by creating job awareness and our retailers by providing them a job placement service. This service is not monetized for the benefit of the company, but it helps keep retail tenants “sticky” to these locations as they can quickly find qualified candidates to fill vacancies. This pairing reduces the need for job seekers in the community to “pound the pavement” and helps local businesses overcome staffing hurdles that are becoming more common with the popularity of the gig economy.”
The tenant is at the heart of this new program. Karen said, “Neighborhood Curated by Colliers provides a way for tenants to engage with their buildings on their terms, rather than going out of their way to find information and talk to property managers. The more power we can put directly in their hands, the better their experiences and their journey will be.”
This obviously marks a new direction for what was traditionally a firm that dealt with strictly real estate. To try to get an understanding of where else this might take the firm I asked Karen what else she imagined Collier’s offering in their Neighborhood program. She said, “Innovative solutions to improve every aspect of the commercial real estate experience are being developed every day. We are constantly monitoring the marketplace for emerging tools that can offer a benefit to our clients and working with them to bring them to life at our properties. Other services that may be integrated into Neighborhood Curated by Colliers include building entry, parking services, occupancy and environment sensors, or communicate with managers.”
So now we see what types of services can be packaged along with the leases that were traditionally the only product real estate companies had to offer. If there is one thing that the purveyors of space are good at, it is extracting value out of their offering. Collier’s is demonstrating a great example of all of the things that are tangential to just square footage that property companies can potentially offer their clients.
