AJ: I must have the least typical background. I always say I got my first job in real estate at age 41. I worked in data and analytics for most of my career and didn’t know anything about development or leasing or financing or any of that. I have a PhD in sociology, which I would say is also not the typical background for real estate professionals. But I’ve always enjoyed and I’ve always said it’s an industry that welcomes a lot of different people with a lot of different backgrounds. People think it’s it’s strictly a sort of sales situation or maybe like a construction development world. Like there’s there’s room for for everyone. So I was doing a lot with visualizing data, making interactive maps and that that ended up being my entree into working at a landlord for the first time. So I’m I’m a big picture is worth a thousand words person trying to boil it all down to the graphic or the chart or the map that that tells the story we really need to tell. So I started at a landlord on the analytics side in the mainly in the retail world. And we all know the retail world has the most data, the richest data, but also probably the most challenging environment, or at least it used to do before before return to office and all that in terms of leasing and development and financing. So retail, I still find it a fascinating world. I do a lot less with it than I used to. But it’s the ultimate area of real estate that has nine lives. I mean, I was working in this area before COVID and we were already talking about, you know, this is it for retail. And Amazon’s going to take over the world. And Target is closing. And, you know, here we are in retail is bigger and better than ever. So there is a cycle and maybe a little bit of an overreaction to some of this. But like I’m a big picture person generally. And to me, real estate’s all about it’s about the fundamentals. It’s about demographics, job market, technology, immigration, interest rate. You know, all of those big trends are what we’re contending with. And we’re dealing with the day to day of, you know, this office lease and this new development. But it’s it’s all a reflection of that bigger picture to me.

DA: So tell me about the current role. When did you land at Colliers and tell me about sort of your day to day there?

AJ: I’ve been about three years at Colliers. Really enjoy it here. You know, we are we are a real full spectrum company. We’re doing we’re doing everything. Every asset class, capital markets, appraisal, consulting, property management, brokerage, you name it. So my role kind of touches a little bit of everything. A lot of, you know, the day to day is a lot of supporting in terms of marketing and pitches and then generating reports, marketing content, doing doing interviews like this, going on the radio, going on television, speaking to reporters, all of the there’s a there’s quite a demand these days for discussion of rate cuts, return to office situation. So the media side consumes a fair bit of what I do. But, you know, I’m still doing the same things. I’m generating content. We’re analyzing data. We have more data than I think we’ve ever had. Not just, you know, lease comps and sales, but all of the secondary data that we’ve got now, maps and foot traffic and, you know, retail spending and all of that sort of data. So there’s a big job to synthesize that to pull out the big picture. And I you know, I I like to think that people with an outsider perspective, it’s it’s sometimes valuable. I think a lot of people have worked in real estate their whole career. And that’s that’s incredibly valuable to to have all the the knowledge of every landlord and every development and how the leasing process works. But I also think it is valuable to have an outside perspective sometimes on data, tools, technology, some of the non real estate stuff.

DA: Right. Well, listen, having had so many guests on this program, I can tell you that I’ve heard stories far and wide as to how and when people got into the industry and like you, maybe some, you know, entered a little bit later in life. And yes, some have been in all their lives. But as always, the stories are fascinating. And no matter when they entered the industry, you know, the passion that they now have for the space, you know, is really, I think, what makes this industry so exciting. It’s something that we can all very quickly gravitate towards. And, you know, once we’re in it, it’s pretty addictive. So I’m just curious, from your perspective, having not been in it all your life, you know, and now, you know, clearly having the passion for it and having a very specific area of expertise. Why do you think your story? Why do you think you were so uniquely suited to this opportunity? Well, what has enabled you to be successful?

AJ: Like I said, a couple of things. One is sometimes it’s valuable to be an outsider, to come with a little bit of a blank slate. You just see things maybe a little differently. I find it very surprising that I am now the voice of optimism. I generally think of myself as a pessimist or maybe a realist or something like that. But it’s feast or famine in the real estate world. So, you know, these days, I think there is a lot of pessimism and there’s some value to being a person who can, with the data, say, look, here’s a lot of data points that say the situation is improving. Borrowing costs are coming down. Return to work is going better than it’s gone in years. The demographic situation is very favorable in Canada. The job market is doing well. There’s wage growth. You know, being able to do that, I think people get pessimistic on the transaction side or just on the sentiment side. You interact with landlords and developers all the day. And it’s it’s sort of a dark time. So I think partly being able to bring in some real data that provides some optimism is always helpful. The other thing is like. I wouldn’t say I’m a hardcore technology person, but I enjoy technology. I try to make the best use of it. And I think real estate is a it’s a sort of low tech industry in some ways. But we still have so much more technology than we had five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Just just the stuff that’s on everybody’s desktop. Now you’re OneDrive, SharePoint, Power BI. It’s amazing that we have these at our fingertips. Me, every analyst who works for me. It’s a huge help in the daily work. And lastly, I’d say, like working in an institution, which was my first job, like a pension plan. It’s great experience because it just it covers absolutely everything. You know, investment, development, asset management, leasing, disposition, appraisal, like you see the whole spectrum. It’s all in one building. It’s all in-house. And that was quite the I’d say quite the crash course in terms of like get your real estate learning in the in the first year or two really accelerated.

DA: Right. Well, I’m glad that I’ve got an optimist on the program today. And I think that we’ve just gone through a very dark and difficult period of time. And really, that brings me back to why I even created this program. And it was at a time right when the pandemic was taking root. The commentary was, you know, all over the map and often very polarizing. And very sensational in terms of trying to make headlines. And I was frustrated and really just wanted to talk to people even back then who were in the trenches, who had real data, real experience, and were prepared to share that with what was really going on. You know, not so much, you know, proclamations as to what would be three months or six months or 12 months from now, but really what was happening today. And I continue to have those conversations since we’re 70 plus interviews. And I think the conversation is just as relevant and the need to provide real time insight into what’s going on. The market is as important as it always was. So, you know, I’m really interested in this conversation in particular through your lens, where, you know, data and research is certainly what drives your day to day involvement in the industry. So, again, I’m looking forward to diving in, looking forward to getting your perspective and understanding sort of, you know, how you use all of that data to help to make your, to help colleagues make better decisions and also your clients to make better decisions. So just curious, sort of top level, what do you think that our listeners need to be aware of as the industry continues to evolve? How are the needs of customers? How are the needs of building owners and operators changing? And how are building operators taking consideration and changes in the market so that their businesses remain vibrant and vital?

AJ: Hmm. Yeah, a lot to chew on there. And it really has been, you know, the most disruptive, unpredictable couple of years in real estate for, I don’t know, 30 years, 50 years. I know people have their war stories of, you know, the early 90s or something. But this, I think, has really broken some of our understanding of how things work. And I feel like it’s an interesting time for me because our usual assumptions about the market development, leasing, they just don’t necessarily work anymore. Like the data is all the more essential. Like in the past, we would just say downtown office is more in demand than suburban office. It’s more expensive. It’s less vacant. I’m not so sure that’s the case anymore. Like it’s certainly more expensive still. But we’re looking at a situation now where downtown vacancies probably higher than the suburbs in almost every Canadian market. And that just doesn’t historically happen. That’s not how we normally discuss it. And we need to have the data at our fingertips. So two things come to mind. One is there’s a lot of new data that is kind of adjacent to the real estate world that wasn’t available maybe even like 10 years ago. And for us, a huge thing that we leverage is like phone tracking and mobility data. Like the number one question now, if it isn’t interest rates, it’s return to office. How much return to office? Is it better or worse than three months ago, three years ago, whatever? And that’s just it’s a very hard question to answer because landlords don’t necessarily want to tell you everything and tell you, you know, we’re a middleman. We’re a services company. We don’t have all that information about every building downtown and how many key cards are being swiped and everything. So the ability to go out and buy some data that is imperfect, but, you know, works off of, OK, here’s people’s phone. You left your house. You went downtown. You sat in your office for three hours. You went to get lunch. It’s still, you know, people get nervous about this. It’s all privacy compliant, anonymized and everything. But that’s a whole new frontier of data. And you can see the implications for almost everything, for retail, for tourism, for return to office, for economic development, for everything. There’s the data side. And then there’s just all the the demographic shifts that happened during the pandemic that we’re still grappling with. Like I’m sure we all know somebody who left Toronto and moved to Barrie, Kingston, London. Like if you move that far, there isn’t really a way for you to come back and work on Bay Street five days. Like it’s just not going to happen physically. It can’t happen. So with all that relocation and that’s all tied to inflation and the cost of living and the housing shortage and people kind of leaving the city seeking greener pastures. So those kind of demographic shifts used to happen very slowly or gradually, or it would be sort of contained to one thing like, OK, there’s an oil boom in Alberta. A few people are moving there and they’re getting jobs and then they’ll move back when they’re done. Now it’s like a much larger explosion of like all this migration within the country, record increase in immigration from outside the country. So the demographic side of it, like I said, I believe in the big picture and the demographic side has become it’s usually a very stable area of things. And it’s suddenly become very chaotic in the last couple of years. And I think we’re just still trying to understand what that means. It’s frustrating, I think, for for landlords. They’re like, look, the building is where it is. There’s not that much I can we can talk about amenities. We can talk about parking. We can talk about whatever. I can’t make the building be 50 kilometers away closer to where people live. So I think it’s a frustrating discussion somehow. But it’s it’s not one that’s going away. So there’s the data side. And then there’s just the the demographic side of everything in the background, the aging population and immigration and everything that’s that’s driving it.

DA: So you talked about a lot of different data sources, particularly mobility that you’re able to tap into that, you know, you know, reach beyond your building and reach beyond the immediate population that’s being served. To what extent are you able to within the buildings where you operate, you know, tap into, you know, the real data, you know, data about, you know, a daily, you know, usage, engagement, occupancy, in particular from the properties that Collier is involved is involved with. Is that something that you’re actively collaborating with your in terms of your property management teams? Or are you still looking more broader and higher level of data?

AJ: That’s a little bit separate. But I think, yeah, certainly our property management team, there’s the the operations side and then there’s the they’ve they’ve done wonderful work sort of independently of me on the sentiment side. Like what are tenants actually thinking? What do they want? What are their issues? Where what is the opposite? What is the obstacle to getting people in office? Or do you even want people in office or are you happy? I think one thing that we we struggle with in the real estate world is accepting that a lot of occupiers like hybrid work. They don’t necessarily see it as a problem. They see it as something that keeps the employees happy, that reduces costs. And that’s landlords certainly don’t like it. But but the employees sometimes like it is. And the middle person here is the tenant and sometimes the tenant. We assume they want everyone back in office. We assume they want a return to twenty nineteen. And that isn’t always the case. And I think our property management team has done a good job tapping into, like, what are the employees really thinking? What are the decision makers in on the tenant side really thinking? Because it’s not a broad brush. There there is a lot of variation and there are there are costs to people pulling people back to the office. There are obviously benefits as well. And but people see the balance of that, I think, a little bit differently than maybe we see it in the brokerage world or the investment world.

DA: Just curious if you have any thoughts around, you know, the office footprint as space requirements continue to change and more importantly, from utilization perspective, you know, we have, you know, the observations around the purpose of space evolving and changing. Any thoughts on how that is influencing, you know, the way in which you are providing data or providing counsel to your clients? That might be interesting to our listeners.

AJ: Yeah, I think we’re still working that out, obviously. I’m sure you have some some insights on this as well, which is like, I think. There’s landlords are getting roped into a much larger conversation and there’s more problems to solve than they used to, like you used to. You know, you provided the space. There wasn’t enough space in the market. It was in demand. People needed it. They needed their employees in office. And I think it’s very disruptive, this situation of, OK, you have to think about are you like what? Again, what’s frustrating for the landlords that we hear all the time is like the number one obstacle. It’s not about amenities. It’s not necessarily about even the physical footprint. It’s about the commute. I can’t get from my house downtown. It takes too long. It’s too expensive. There isn’t enough parking. I don’t like riding transit. The infrastructure situation is is too chaotic. There’s too much construction. And that’s, you know, sort of an unfair thing to put on the landlord. Like, how are they supposed to solve that? Reconstruction of the Gardner or the, you know, commute times on the TTC or whatever. But I think it we are going to maybe see a situation where like. Landlords have to turn their attention to like. The building itself isn’t enough. I need to find a way to help with like maybe there’s a subsidized Presto card or your parking is prorated based on how frequently you come in or there’s some kind of like things that we haven’t even considered before in terms of the landlord having a role there or maybe the tenant having a role there. I think like all of the amenities discussion. I’m I think it’s great. Like a greater emphasis on I work in a building where photo exhibitions are. They they just built a temporary squash court in the lobby and had a tournament where, you know, the best players are like sports, entertainment, music, have a string quartet, whatever. I think all the fun stuff. It’s a little hard to measure. I think that’s why people don’t like it. It obviously costs and it’s like, what’s the benefit of this goodwill reputation? But I think people feel good about the office. They have a story to tell the date. Like often I come home. My wife works at home completely. I’m like, oh, man, today there was this check out this picture I took of an art exhibition, the Luminato Festival in our building. And there’s there is some intangible value to that about good vibes, about the office, feeling like we have a cool office, feeling like you want to be there. You might be surprised coming in again. It’s a higher bar than we had five or ten years ago. But I think that’s just that’s the situation now. It might not be the situation forever, but it certainly is as of today.

DA: Well, listen, I think we can both agree that your business has become far more complex. That with a client earlier this week, and we talked about the complexity of the space of the industry used to be, you know, building, they will come. You were in the business of providing space. And if you had great space and, you know, you could find the right occupant, you know, you sign a long term lease and your day to day is just making sure that, you know, all of the essential property management issues are addressed. You know, good quality heating and lighting, air conditioning, maintenance, security. There is a lot more that needs to be considered today. And I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon, to your point. And a lot of these other programs and services and experiences are now all drivers to, you know, how people will engage and utilize space. And I think it all boils down to every single aspect boils down to the experience that’s offered. And you talked about a lot of different aspects of your built world. And I know your property very well. And I think you’ll agree that the experience there is, you know, really first rate, first class. And there’s always something interesting that always keeps you engaged and interested. And I think, you know, that’s a big part of the business that you’re now in. You know, as we look to the future, a little bit of forecasting, if budget and resources were not an issue, if your research division just, you know, got a blank check, what three initiatives, three new initiatives would you undertake to position your business or your part of the business for success over the next three to five years?

AJ: OK, that’s that’s a spicy one. Let me let me think about this. I think there’s like I said, it’s sort of the golden age of data where we’re a little bit behind maybe in the real estate world compared to insurance, finance, tech, obviously. But I think there’s there’s still a lot that could be done. I’m very interested in. Like, this is not what we engage with day to day, but there’s augmented reality, drones, these kind of things where like we’ve been hearing about these things in real estate for, I think, quite some time. But it’s also like, you know, I haven’t seen like the silver bullet type implementation on this in terms of like something that really transforms things. So for me, it’s it’s about like leveraging a lot of these new technological tools. And like we’re still somewhat dependent on people power to get a lot of what get a lot of the data we do. Like I mentioned stuff like the phones and the mobility. That’s great. But when it comes to seeing if the 62nd floor of First Canadian Place is occupied or not, you send the intern and they walk over there and they take the elevator up and they look in the lobby and it’s a very annual process and very labor intensive. And so I think there’s there’s got to be a sort of leading edge where people are exploring that in terms of, you know, is there a loading camera that can fly up on the drone and assess all of this based off of, you know, lighting or movement or something like that? I think there’s there’s still some like a lot of opportunities on the technology side. I think that that and I don’t necessarily leverage them myself. Like we are not deep in the AI world here or the metaverse or anything like that. And I have some skepticism about that. But I also think there’s some of that that really could could transform the industry. There’s also a lot of focus on like for years, there’s been focus on the green building, the sustainable building, the low emission net zero, whatever you want to call it. But that’s I think that’s a huge area. But they’re like in down times like this, there tends to be pullback in those kind of situation. I’m sure you see this, which is like it’s the top of the priority list when the market’s hot. And now, you know, it’s number six on the list because we’ve got some bigger problems there. So I think that’s an interesting area where there’s still a lot of room to grow. You know, it’s amazing the emissions of an office tower or warehouse or anything like that. And there’s probably some massive gains to be made there. I don’t know. Like I said, I think there’s if budget were no issue, I would be curious about things like, yeah, what if we gave free parking to all the employees? Or what if we gave them all a free bus pass? And like, would that actually move the needle? Because I’ve heard debates on that. Some people say like, look, it cost me $5 a day to commute. This isn’t really the issue. It’s bigger stuff. But I’ve also heard some arguments, which is like, we need to start accepting that people require an incentive here, like as much as we don’t like to hear that. It’s like, we don’t want people with their handouts saying, pay me to come to the office. But there is some balance of power between the employee and the employer that’s shifted a little bit there.

DA: Well, you know, I don’t think we can buy our employees back. And I don’t think we can, you know, incentivize them back. And so we thought, we think a lot about just the whole notion of experience and hospitality. We think that, again, building operators are no longer in the space business. They really focus now on how they are creating, you know, what we call destinations of choice, places where people want to be. So I’m just curious, are you either starting to think about, are you seeing any demand in terms of a data, from a data perspective, where you can support, you know, how buildings are performing that maybe have a greater focus on the experience that’s being offered, that are starting to sort of, you know, lean into this new phenomenon. You know, office buildings becoming more home-like, you know, offering a higher level of hospitality. Are you either starting to think about or beginning to track data to support what that looks like?

AJ: Early days of that. I think the trend everyone’s noted, top to bottom, is that the best office is vastly outperforming the sort of middle of the road. So it’s talked about all the time. It’s discussed at every conference and on every podcast, the flight to quality. Yeah. But it’s hard to disentangle how much of that, is that because of the amenities? Is that because of the shorter commute time? Is that because the rents are higher and people feel more sunk costs to get there? Is it because there’s different types of occupiers in the AAA buildings than there are in the sort of normal buildings? So I think there’s a desire to disentangle that. And like, people want to see that the amenity has a net positive benefit. It’s just very hard to disentangle. The buildings with the best amenities also are path-connected and closest to Union Station and have the highest rent and have the best property management. So is it the amenities or is it something else? Like amenities certainly can’t hurt. I mean, obviously it’s like it has to have some benefit, but whether that benefit is like really changing… Like all we have to go off is sort of self-reported stuff. You know, you ask the employee, do you want to come in more because there’s a better coffee shop or there’s a better view or it’s connected to the path? And they generally say yes, but that’s just self-reported. That’s not the actual behavior of the tenant. So it’s a little hard to disentangle. I think it’s something we certainly want to work on here in terms of like, if this is the future… And not every building can be super amenitized. Like, I think that’s something we hear from landlords too, which is like, this is great, but I can’t like… It’s just not realistic to have a super fancy coffee shop and all this. And no matter what I do to the building, it’s still going to be 50 years old. It’s not going to have a view of the downtown waterfront. Like every building cannot become a AAA building and there has to be a path for those as well. And I am not a believer in, we’re going to turn all the office buildings into apartments. Like that’s a very much an edge case in my mind. That’s like the bottom 5% of the downtown office market might be impacted by that. But the rest of it, that’s not a realistic discussion.

DA: You’ve raised a ton of really interesting insights there, and I think you’re right. Not every building can compete from an amenity perspective. Not every building can take a whole floor out of operation and turn it into a boardroom and meeting room and maybe cafe and fitness center. So, but I think there are ways that buildings across the board and across all after classes and ages, and they can start to compete. And certainly we’ve talked about technology. We’ll talk a little bit more about technology. That can also be a bit of an equalizer in terms of sort of leveling the playing field. But I think you’re right. How do we evaluate and put some mechanisms in place to score some of these investments in what we call experience, when you’ve got other factors that also get blended into that conversation, like access to sub transit and proximity and the commute time and so forth. So we’ve got to somehow find ways to separate and provide a more meaningful data score on some of these new initiatives that building operators are looking to as a way to compete. So maybe that’s an opportunity for us to continue to talk post this podcast. Let’s take a short commercial break and we’ll be right back.

COMMERCIAL BREAK

DA: And now I’d like to welcome back to the show, Adam Jacobs, National Head of Research with Colliers Canada. Again, really glad you could be with us today. I’m enjoying our conversation. We started to talk a little bit about technology and you talked about technologies that are impacting your business day to day, but certainly commercial real estate has now for many years, certainly before the pandemic and during has been going through a period of disruption as a result of technology. Just curious on any thoughts you have on how either your technology stack is changing for Colliers as an operator and or what you’re seeing at the building level in terms of the technology stack and feeding in data into your business. What are you seeing? Any thoughts on again, technology that is helping to improve the way in which people interact with their spaces and their buildings?

AJ: Yeah, I know there’s been a lot of like, every major landlord has like a tenant app and it’s pushed out. I have to say, I work in a building with a tenant app. I don’t really use it. I don’t necessarily find it useful. So I think those are kind of table stakes now, but it’s a chicken and egg to some degree also, which is like, if I don’t engage with it, then it doesn’t have value to me or the landlord, like they’re supposed to be getting trading sort of information for my engagement. Like I said, I think our property management side has done wonderful work where they’re directly engaging with clients, like just the ability to survey clients, have a captive audience. Now more than ever, like five or 10 years ago, it’s like, what do employees think about working from home? It’s like, who cares? That’s not really a discussion. So it doesn’t matter what the employees think about working from home, but there’s much, much, much more attention to like, okay, do we need to slice this up by who does sort of independent work versus who does collaborative work or younger employees versus older or people with a long commute versus people with a short commute? Like people want to be able to chop this up a lot finer than they used to. So just the ability to engage with people, like a survey is, it’s not a new technology. It’s been around forever, but we have a better ability than ever. I think we’re finding that it’s harder, the leasing process is harder, I think most people would agree than it used to be. And we need to bring more to the table than just like, here’s five options. Like something, I’ll give an example, like our GI, we have an in-house like GIS mapping team. They do a lot of great work. Often it’s like, we’re considering a new office. Office, I want you to analyze how many minutes this would add to the commute of the average employee if we moved from Markham to Pickering or if we moved from downtown to the suburbs. Like we know where the employees live. We know where the offices are. We know where the roads are. Let’s put some actual data behind this and this can help people get to the decision. Perhaps we can actually reduce the commute time on average. We’ve even had them doing work like the tenant is going to take a lot of space. They would like their name on the building. We can use GIS and mapping to look at how wide the view of that sign would be if it was on this downtown tower versus that downtown tower. How many square meters of view would you get? Like we were not doing this sort of stuff five years. It was not important. There were only a few places to lease. Do you want this one or that one? This is it and you better make a decision because if you wait three months, someone’s going to take your space or you can pre-lease something and wait six years for it to get built. So it’s a very, like the tenant has the upper hand. I think we can all agree now. And the technology requirements on our side used to be, okay, we need to have good intel on what are the listings and what are the rents and maybe what was the actual NER of a few deals that Collier’s did there. And maybe there was a little additional like, hey, you know what, like we have an interactive map that can take any address and show you all the amenities nearby. I’m going to pick this place, show me in 500 meters how many dry cleaners, how many dentists, how many coffee shops. Again, that wasn’t really necessary like prior to the pandemic, but you start to get vacancy in the double digits and tenants get a little picky and rightly so it’s hard to blame them. It hasn’t been in their favor for quite some time, right? So it’s kind of hard to blame the tenants to say, okay, it’s been a rough 10 years for me. I’m going to demand a little bit more from this process. So we find that all that kind of secondary data which isn’t necessarily about the building per se or this building versus that building it has become much more valuable in the leasing process.

DA: Yeah, totally agree. And in terms of building technology, you are our target audience. We provide technology to enable the building operator to deliver a great experience to its tenants. So we don’t see ourselves as wanting to be or building towards just another building app, really trying to create a platform that helps to digitize that whole customer experience that you have and enjoy within a building. And to your point, it needs to drive more value back to you. It needs to improve how you work, where you work and it’s got to surprise and delight you. So it’s a lot, we think a lot about that. And again, as we continue this conversation, we’d love to tap into you not only as an industry expert but a user of technology in a building and how we can make sure that you love the technology that’s being used. So your insight would be super valuable. As we look to sort of wrap up our conversation today, our closing speed round is an opportunity to get to know you, Adam, a little bit better. So a couple of questions for you. Looking back, what’s the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you first started your career?

AJ: I would say on the real estate side, dig into the financial technical stuff that drives real estate. Like it’s very opaque. Like real estate is full of jargon and acronyms and sort of financial engineering, but understand like how does appraisal work? What’s the net asset value of a fund? What are the tax advantages of commercial real estate versus a different asset? Like how do REITs do buybacks when they want to acquire more of their own stock? Like often we’re at the sort of surface level of just like, who are the landlords? What are the listings? What’s the vacancy rate?Which is very valuable, but like much of this is driven, like the confusions about like, why are they doing this? Or why are they asking this rent? Or why are they allowing this to be vacant? You have to understand the asset management, the sort of financial, like what benchmark are you comparing yourself again? And often it’s like, or even just like, how does a pension plan work? Like a pension plan owns a lot more than real estate. And they’re balancing, like they often aren’t doing things because they have their own internal mandates about real estate versus infrastructure versus venture capital versus bonds. And so things that are happening in the real estate market with the big landlord that don’t make sense, quote unquote, they do if you can understand the kind of financial background of this. And like I said, I’m coming to this, like not at all as a CFA certified accountant or anything. So that’s something I wish I got a handle on a little bit earlier, which is all the kind of financial nitty gritty of real estate.

DA: I think that’s good advice. And I think for any business that any young person is in, the financial fundamentals of that business often is what drives a lot of decision-making. So without that, you’re in a bit of a void as to how things are really being decided upon. So again, I think that’s great advice for any business, not just real estate. Do you have a favorite book or podcast that has positively impacted your approach to work or life?

AJ: Yeah, I love this question. I was looking through the books at my desk. This might be a little out of left field. There’s a book I got years ago and I still revisit. It’s called The Design of Everyday Things, which is, it’s all about the hidden aspects of design in the most mundane things. Like why do you turn on your shower by twisting a knob in this direction? Why is the door handle on the left side instead of the right side? Why is the coffee pot design with the spout on the opposite side of the handle? Like just the things that are beneath your notice day to day about why your keyboard works the way it does. So I’m like a general sense of my work. I’m always striving for clarity, simplicity, that one chart that just explains it all, but doesn’t require any explanation. People just look at it. They’re like, ah, I get it. This is so obvious. And I give a seminar every year to my analysts where it’s like, we must simplify all our graphics. Everything must be incredibly simple. I don’t wanna see three different axes on top of this with a, like, I just want it absolutely as dead simple as possible. So I think I always go back to that book because it’s just a great example of like what does and doesn’t work and what does work. You don’t even notice it, right? Like the truest endorsement of like a good design is people look at that and they’re like, well, that’s obvious. Yeah, of course I knew that. It’s like, ah, then I’ve done it right because you didn’t even, like if you’re sitting there puzzling over like what does this mean? And what is the axis? And when am I supposed to get out of this? Then we’ve already kind of lost the battle on the data side.

DA: I love it. I think that’s a book I’ve got to get my hands on. Thanks for sharing. Name one way in which technology has improved how you live or work.

AJ: I would say the ability to make maps is so much better than when I started my career. Real estate, you know, it’s all location, location, location. Mapping used to be, you know, heavy duty, expensive. It only lived on a desktop. You couldn’t load it on your laptop. You had to install everything off multiple CDs and get all this data. Like now it’s, everything’s fast. Everything’s interactive. Everything can be published online. We’ve done that. Okay, there’s going to be a big transit expansion in Montreal. We did a whole thing. Here’s, you know, here’s an interactive map of the new line. And here’s the interactive demographics where you can zoom into this neighborhood and see what housing developments are proposed in the average age here. And French speakers versus English speakers. It’s attractive, it’s accurate. And we’ve just got the tools at our fingertips. So I would say the mapping side, just how like widely available it’s, I can just, all my analysts can have it. It’s everywhere. Anybody can interact with it. That has really transformed how we work, I think more than most other things.

DA: Right, a very specific and practical use case. You know, commercial real estate continues to evolve. What skills do you think are going to become sought after by building operators as we look to the future? You know, maybe skills that were not historically part of, you know, the way in which commercial real estate companies were set up. Any thoughts on what we’re going to be seeing, you know, new skills, new roles, new responsibilities as the industry continues to evolve?

AJ: I’d say, well, I’ve harped on technology a ton, but I still think like better understanding and utilization. Like we are not the leading edge. We’re not Facebook or Google or Microsoft, but we’re still a little behind as an industry, I think. And it’s amazing, we were having this discussion at the office that like technology has speeded up, transformed so many things, but it takes longer than ever to build a house, to build an office tower. Like technology has had zero impact. It’s actually takes, you know, we were looking at data from CMHC, it’s never taken longer to build a house. That doesn’t totally make sense. So I would say that, and then just like kind of related to that, this sort of like project management, like things are often a little bit ad hoc in real estate. You know, things just kind of like come up when they come up and this breaks and we have to fix it and we need to get a contract. Like there’s probably, I remember being excited when I first saw some of these ideas like digital twins and the idea that like, it’s possible to simulate or forecast. And then from there, like plan, you know, I know that in 2027, this boiler system is kind of gonna be on its last legs. I know that now, I don’t have to wait for it to happen and then close the building for two days and do an emergency thing.  But again, that’s sort of theoretical. I’m not sure, like the practicalities of that, we haven’t totally worked out yet. So I think like, yeah, the project management, forecasting side and then of course, the, you know, my interest is the data and technology side.

DA: Right, yep. More data scientists and commercial real estate for sure in the future. Probably, not less. Yeah, absolutely. If you were, Adam, if you were not doing what you’re doing right now, what would you be doing instead?

AJ: I think the interest for me and where I was even before data and analytics, it’s kind of the adjacent industry to real estate, which is like public infrastructure. I used to work in that area and it’s just roads, you know, rail, mass transit, like building new educational institutions. Like it’s such a huge area of need. I think we’re realizing now like how behind the eight ball we are on transit, on the gardener, on road repairs, sewers, like all of these things. It’s like, it’s this invisible side of the world, but I’m like, it’s having its moment now where it’s a big priority. Everybody has an opinion. So I’d probably be back in the public infrastructure world that I used to work in, which again, it’s got a lot of similarities with real estate. You know, it’s a lot of interactive maps, lots of locations, lots of financial, you know, forecasting asset management. It’s very much the same world. It’s just the kind of, these are things that cannot be public sector. We don’t have private sector roads except the 407. We don’t really have private sector rail. You know, a lot of it is folded into the public sector. So I’d say that’s probably it, or else I’d be back in the analytics world doing consulting or something.

DA: Okay, well, clearly analytics at the core. Adam, thank you so much for joining me today. I love the conversation, learned a lot. Looking forward to continuing to connect and helping each other wherever we can. Again, thanks for coming on the program today and until our next conversation, I wish you all the best.

AJ: Happy to be here, David. Thanks for having me.

DA: Take care, Adam. That’s a wrap on today’s episode of 10. I want to thank Adam for joining me on the program. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps others find the show. Thanks for listening. And until next time, I wish you all continued success in building community where you work and live.