OfficeBlocks | FAQ
OfficeBlocks gives investors, occupiers and commercial real estate (CRE) brokers rapid data access and insights to analyse and compare the CRE around them and across Asia Pacific.
This cutting-edge suite of tools brings together the power of AI, big data, and advanced analytics, to give users actionable insights into commercial properties across major cities in Asia Pacific.
Consisting of a free mobile app for the on-the-go user and remote search via the paid enterprise tool, OfficeBlocks is a first-of-its-kind technology to enable strategic leasing and investment decisions.
The tool was developed by real estate consultancy, JLL, and risk management company, Risk Integrated. You can find out more at https://www.officeblocks.com/
OfficeBlocks offers a suite of tools:
- Market Intelligence App
By snapping an image of a commercial building, users get an estimated rental value, availability for commercial leasing and other property information.
Using image-based machine learning and AI, the app analyses the photo to understand the age and grade of the building and the size. The app is then able to provide estimated rent per square foot.
The Market Intelligence App can be used across any Asia Pacific city that OfficeBlocks covers, and can be accessed regardless of the user’s location. However, this free version of the app only provides users data within 2-km of their current location.
- Market Intelligence Platform
The desktop version of Market Intelligence is fully integrated with the mobile app.
The desktop version allows users to generate reports via a visual mapping application, to record information, place pins on buildings of interest, and receive comparison reports on key building data.
Users can collaborate across teams by viewing saved pins on a desktop where they can access and share notes and links to available space in a particular building or within the search vicinity.
- Portfolio Intelligence Platform
The Portfolio Intelligence Platform looks at the overall risk and/or return of owning a set of properties by showing the impact of investments and disposals.
This allows the user to understand the risk profile of their current portfolio and make strategic decisions as to which sectors and geographies should be targeted for acquisitions or divestments. The platform does this by measuring expected returns, historical variances, market correlations and correlation between markets.
The Portfolio Intelligence Platform can be linked to the Market Intelligence Platform allowing the user to select potential targets and then stress test them. Similarly, the user can use the Portfolio Intelligence Platform to identify desirable strategies and use the Market Intelligence Platform to find individual buildings in that market.
- Risk Intelligence Platform
The Risk Intelligence Platform gives a lease-by-lease picture of the risk. This is a more in-depth risk analysis of a specific property, which also drills down into the specific source of risk.
The platform uses a detailed 20-year cashflow model for income and construction and simulation across sectors, currencies and financing stack.
Combining the unmatched scale of JLL’s data and revolutionised by the cutting-edge AI of Risk Integrated, OfficeBlocks provides unrivalled real estate insights.
- Industry-leading real estate data
- OfficeBlocks is powered by JLL’s world-leading real estate data, which is used by some of the world’s biggest investment firms and brokers.
- For more than 25 years, JLL has amassed one of the most comprehensive and reliable property databases in Asia Pacific by drawing on over 2 million data points.
- JLL provides in-depth insights across 14 countries and more than 50 cities.
- Cutting-edge AI
- Risk Integrated takes the same AI precision used in medical imaging and applies it to analysing building images.
- For the first time, robust AI tools that are used to forecast stock prices and the weather, have been applied to predict the future performance of property assets.
- OfficeBlocks uses machine learning to classify images – by inputting thousands of images the tool is trained to recognise building features.
JLL and Risk Integrated are the first to bring a proptech tool of this kind to market. OfficeBlocks is the only tool that enables users to access accurate commercial rental estimates, compare property assets, or make data-based investment decisions.
JLL provides global property expertise and world-leading real estate data. This is underpinned by Risk Integrated’s AI, which processes millions of data points to help users uncover insights. This enables OfficeBlocks to provide smart data to help users make better-informed leasing and investment decisions.
The two companies have been working together since 2017.
OfficeBlocks is an independent company that was incorporated in 2019. The company is a joint venture between real estate consultancy, JLL, and risk management company, Risk Integrated.
Until now, investors, occupiers and commercial real estate (CRE) brokers have lacked immediate and up-to-date insights into commercial properties. They have been reliant on traditional and time-consuming methods of information gathering – from physical visits to properties, to analysis of complex data-filled reports and spreadsheets.
There is an urgent need to leverage technology to bring greater transparency to commercial real estate data, to enable more accurate leasing and investment decisions.
Leading global real estate consultancy JLL, and risk management company, Risk Integrated, have come together to create OfficeBlocks, an innovation that puts powerful data into the hands of CRE professionals and empowers them to make smarter decisions.
There is a huge demand for accurate and reliable real estate information to help with leasing and investment decision-making. Investors, occupiers and CRE brokers want to understand, compare and analyse commercial real estate around them and beyond their borders, but they are currently reliant on time consuming, manual methods of data collection.
OfficeBlocks gives users access to real-time information on market rents across major cities in Asia Pacific. The app feature is designed to be intuitive so users can self-serve anytime, anywhere.
- Groundbreaking insights – OfficeBlocks takes millions of data points and processes them in a meaningful manner to help users uncover accurate real estate data – from rental performance to property availability.
- Speed – at the touch of a button, users can access reliable real estate insights across all major cities in Asia Pacific, speeding up deal flow.
- Access – investors, occupiers and CRE brokers can access the data and insights they need from the comfort of their own home or office, without the need for in-market or cross-border travel.
- Contrast and compare – investors can compare property performance and benchmark their existing assets.
- Streamlined – users can take notes and photos, whether it via the mobile app or desktop version, and easily share data with their team.
OfficeBlocks consists of both a free mobile app (Market Intelligence App) and an advanced enterprise tool (Market Intelligence Platform), which is available on mobile and desktop. The enterprise tool is available in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific and data covers key cities in Asia Pacific, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Seoul and Bangkok.
The enterprise solution consists of a suite of tools, and is charged using a pay-as-you-go model. The price varies depending on the user’s requirements. There is also a free mobile application.
The free version is available for free on both the App and Google Store*. To access the enterprise versions of the tools, sign up through the OfficeBlocks official website. A representative will be in touch to talk you through the tool’s benefits and functionalities, and to arrange a live demo.
*Availability in China limited to iPhone users for now
The enterprise user does not have to be within the specific market to have access to the data.
As the suite of OfficeBlocks tools go live, we are continuing to gather customer feedback and using this to further develop our offering. For example, due to client demand, we are currently building in two additional features into OfficeBlocks:
- The ability to see how rents have performed historically.
- Data to forecast how rents may perform over the next 3-5 years.
- By 2025, 9 of the world’s top 15 income-producing metropolitan areas will be in Asia Pacific. Today there is $40+ billion in capital is ready to be deployed into Asia Pacific real estate.
- Although COVID-19 has impacted property investments and transactions, this is predicted to be short-term. According to JLL’s Investor Survey (completed August 2020), 32% of respondents expect recovery in 2H 2020 and 52% expect transaction volumes to recover fully by the second half of next year.
- Hong Kong: 78% of investors are committed to investing the same amount in 2020 as in the previous year, and 4% plan to increase their commitment.
- Singapore: 52% expect to see no change in their investments this year, and 44% predict an increase.