An IT supplement in a CRE magazine

In Sweden there is no publication focusing on the use of IT in the real estate. However, one of the largest CRE magazines, FastighetsTidningen (owned by The Swedish Property Federation) has at least a IT supplement in one of their yearly issues.

It is named IT & Property and it's 52 pages covers a wide range of topics.
The ones that got my attention were;

The customer satisfaction is rising
A survey, conducted for the paper, among clients of Property Management Suppliers shows three large conclusions:

• Most clients are satisfied with their suppliers (but wasn’t from the beginning)
• The area with most complaints is the user interface (especially to make it easy for non-hard core users)
• The suppliers are moving online (finally... if you ask me...)

Status among the Property Management suppliers
In two articles the status of the 15+ suppliers of Property Management Systems are analyzed, with the highlights of:

• DinaFastigheter has been around for 2 years and has 250 clients
• Estatus which in 2006 was founded in 2006 has now a complete web-based system with 10 clients (and has been acquired by SoftOne Fastigheter)
• Modus which has, since 2003, been developing a brand new system together with MKB (large property owner in Malmö) is still some time from a public release
• Fast2 is developing SMS service for renting of student housing
• LEB is working on a complete new code version which will make their system much easier to personalize
• VITEC has created a much more customer focused organisation
• 5D-system is focusing on integration using XLM standard
• PONDUS has released a web version

BIM is moving forward, but it’s a long way
The topic of BIM (Building Information Model) is covered extensively.  Especially the academic research conducted by Rogier Jongeling. You find all his publications here. An additional article here in Byggindustrin (in Swedish).

More about the supplement
It is written by Björn Åslund, a freelance journalist and among other things a blogger about environment topics.

The entire supplement could be downloaded as a PDF version here (5 MB).

Brilliant wish list from Remit Consulting

Got a 'Merry Christmas Greeting' today that included a list to great to spare.
It is Remit Consulting in the UK that put together a wish list for the property industry.

10. We would like one standard reference code for every individual property so that all systems can add information to a property accurately – perhaps searchable on Google?

9. We would like completely standard form, web-based leases so that negotiations for new premises can be swift and cheap. And, in the UK, we would like standard 5 year terms.

8. We think “Black-box” property trading (e.g., I want to buy 3 shops at 6%) would reduce the cost of trading property and commoditise a whole class of property investments. An alternative to derivatives?

7. We would like to see Google Earth updated by live satellite images – perhaps even zooming in to see truck or car movements on our managed sites;

6. We want listed companies to agree a standard of reporting on publicly accessible reporting dashboards – online detail which would make investing in property companies more transparent;

5. We would like to see the last of chasing cheques from tenants – let’s enforce the use of direct debits and monthly rentals in advance – an end to collecting rent on horseback, as Bob puts it;

4. Why can’t we have daily property revaluations? Whole swathes of the residential property market relies on automated valuations – surely there is a mid-way point between a full inspection with detailed analysis of scarce comparables and no valuation at all;

3. Wouldn’t indexed rents be a step forward? Our apologies to the UK rent-review surveyors but this would modernise UK property leases at one fell swoop;

2. Longer lunch breaks to give more time for discussing how to make things better – we are working more remotely, and with tighter deadlines; let’s take the time to consider how things could be done;

And, at number 1 position:

1. We want banks to start lending to each other again. ‘Nuff said.

Brilliant! 
It also make you understand the differences that exist between countries; like 10, 5 and 3...   ;-)   

Keep up the great work and Merry Christmas to you Andrew, Mark, Melita and all of the rest. 

Swedish construction firms starts blogging

Burson-Marsteller (global public relations and public affairs firm) has published a white paper (in PDF and SlideShare) on the use of blogs in companies on the OMX Large Cap list (the Nordic exchange list and the Norwegian counterpart)

The conclusion is;

Approximately 9.1%, or 12 companies, of the 132 Nordic Large Caps have company sponsored blogs. This number represents a lower percentage than the 14.8%, or 72 companies, with blogs on the Fortune 500 list in the U.S. A reason for the lower penetration among Nordic companies could be that the U.S. market in general is ahead on the adoption curve when it comes to both social media and innovation in marketing communications.

More about the white paper is found at Svd (a large Swedish newspaper).

Construction firms in the study
Both Skanska and NCC were among the companies blogging. Both of them to have a conversation with students. You find them here; NCCs blog and Skanskas blog.

Next step
Hopefully they will take this way of communicating to the next step. Anyone that has lived or worked close to a construction site would appreciate information what is happening with the project. A blog could be a great channel for this.