In March, our CEO, Simon Davis, headed to the sunny South of France for one of the real estate sector’s most highly anticipated global events; MIPIM.
The four-day conference sees those from across the industry gather in Cannes to network, connect and dissect the year ahead, and beyond.
Below Simon takes a deep dive into the key takeaways from MIPIM 2024.
Partnerships over pushy sales tactics
The real estate sector is a relationship sector – it's all about who you know, and you can’t put a value on those relationships. While those who haven’t attended might see a trip to Cannes as a costly activity, the real return on investment to any business is felt long into the future.
MIPIM isn’t an environment for selling, it’s an environment for learning and it provides the ideal opportunity to explore real industry challenges on mutual ground outside of the humdrum of daily life – people are more honest and open in the casual setting. We took this opportunity to improve current relationships and establish new ones.
For us, a hugely beneficial part of the week was the potential partnerships that have come from it. We want to ensure we’re providing relevant insights to our customers and through developing partnerships with like-minded tech organisations, we’re expanding our capabilities to do just that. Collaborative ideas can support the market far better than we can do alone as individual businesses.
Working in silos
There have without a doubt been some challenges for the sector recently, with capital market deals being significantly down last year compared to previous periods, and many businesses now diversifying into new markets because of it.
One reoccurring topic of the conference was that traditionally sectors worked in siloes, with everyone sticking in their own lane – be it residential, hotels, development or any other avenue. However, with the need for diversification pressing, silos are no longer suitable.
Gone are the days when a property could go online and sell itself. To ensure the viability of a property in the future, businesses need to review cross-sector opportunities by reflecting on the five Rs.
The five Rs for retail success
- Relet – Is relisting it on a platform and attracting a new tenant the best option?
- Refurbishment – Is it more beneficial to improve the asset by upgrading the EPC rating or other features to enhance the attractiveness when relet on the market?
- Repurpose – Is another use or mixed use the most viable option? Will converting a property for example from office space to residential or residential and commercial going to be make the most financial sense?
- Redevelop – Should you knock it down and create land opportunities for a totally different scheme?
- Resell – If no other options are suitable, is the best business decision to sell the asset?
Every business handling a property should go through this process. However, stepping out of your comfort zone and diversifying to keep a property financially viable, should be done with the data to back those decisions.
Next steps
From our conversations at MIPIM, we have found more need than ever before for reliable, holistic data sets to support businesses in making property decisions outside of their sector. Diversification is an essential move to remain viable, and one that we can support businesses with by providing flexible datasets for.
We’ll be working with organisations and partnering with like-minded tech businesses to ensure that we’re continuing to adapt to the ever-changing market and provide worthwhile data insights.
We’ve got CRMP next month and UKREiiF coming up in May where we hope to make further connections and work on solutions for the challenges impacting businesses industry-wide
If you're interested in exploring the powerful insights Nimbus provides please contact our team of experts today at 01926 355 424 or email sales@nimbusproperty.co.uk.
