Coworking Operators Leaning More On Daily Users To Boost Occupancy

The COVID-19 recession has had a complicated impact on data center real estate, and firms are adapting quickly to respond. 

Unlike past downturns, the current recession comes with an ongoing health crisis and a sudden shift to remote work, in addition to swift changes to U.S. fiscal policy as the country pushes to recover. For the data center industry as a whole, the sharp rise in remote work and schooling has accelerated already-strong demand for data storage and processing.

“People working from home put a spotlight on the distributed workforce and cloud services, and that’s why you’re seeing such strong investor interest,” said Pat Lynch, senior managing director with CBRE’s Data Center Solutions group. 

Read the full story here.

In Case You Missed It...

Josh Feinberg remembers starting out in commercial real estate in 2007 as a college graduate who found himself hacking together low-tech client presentations on Microsoft Word. Now the 34-year-old founder of Austin-based Otso, a financial services firm focused on commercial leasing, Feinberg began his career as a broker in Houston, working under a mentor who “did everything with pen and paper pad, balanced his checkbook by hand, and hated tech.”

While commercial real estate has embraced more technology in recent years, especially when it comes to conducting market research, automating aspects of prospecting and improving overall workflows, it’s still “a decade behind” residential, Feinberg said. Corporate culture is often similarly stuck in the past. 

“It’s run like Mad Men with a thin layer of email and software tools layered on top,” said Michael Colacino, president of SquareFoot, the commercial leasing site. “It’s still happening in the brokerage industry; you’ll see big corner offices and class distinctions between senior and junior brokers.”

Read the full story here.