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Everyone has a side hustle these days. Why can’t buildings? And it’s not a big leap to figure out what a lot of buildings have in abundance but are not fully utilizing, and that’s data. It would be the perfect gig. It’s virtually recession proof as it isn’t just tied to one purchaser/user, like tenants, and it’s needed even more when the economy slows. Owners and managers can now, with minimal investment, unlock new value by packaging data-driven insights tied to operations, foot traffic, and sustainability performance. It is already beginning to reshape the sector, and this is The What, The Why and The How-to.
The What:
Operational Insights for Tenants
Commercial buildings do and can generate vast amounts of operational data—from energy consumption and space utilization to air quality and wellness metrics. For most, this data sits unused or only used for the basics until it is either stored or deleted. Tech-savvy building owners have started to curate and sell anonymized or asset-specific insights packages to tenants, especially in retail. These can be used to lead efficiency initiatives, sustainability reporting, and real time space management solutions.
If building owners look beyond their own tenants to a much larger stage, this anonymized data can be monetized through curated data packages added to leases that provide valuable market insights, industry benchmarks, or predictive analytics.
Foot Traffic & Behavioral Data
For retail and mixed use properties, physical footfall is essential for business modeling. There are a number of location intel based platforms that aggregate anonymized movement patterns to give building owners and managers detailed insights into consumer behavior. This information has varied applications, including assisting in planning tenant mix, marketing strategies, site selection, and lease negotiations. It also has real value for investors who are trying to assess a building’s potential. And its significance isn’t simply based on foot counts; it is much more sophisticated and now includes analytics on things such as dwell times, peak hours, seasonal turnover, and demographic flow, which enables property owners to tell powerful, data-backed stories to tenants and investors.
Benchmarking Platforms & Sustainability
Sustainability or Impact Reports have become main stream in commercial real estate (CRE). Owners who have invested in the tools to give them robust energy, wellness, and sustainability datasets now have strategic leverage. One revenue stream being utilized is offering subscription-based benchmarking platforms which both landlords and tenants are seeking to compare performance or track ESG key performance indicators.
As CRE’s data ecosystem matures, moving from simple collection toward “production, distribution, and activation,” real estate firms that excel at production or activation of data are turning this into significant revenue streams. This has led to the creation of property management platforms that can supercharge the data, giving clients transparency into asset performance, leverage data insights and monetize space to create incremental gains.
The Why: Three Reasons
The How-to: In Three Steps
As a side hustle, this definitely has some chops. One of the main drivers is that there are several market segments interested in purchasing the data. These include tenants looking for operational insights, retailers and brands who need behavioral data, investors and government agencies who will buy benchmarking and compliance data, prop-tech firms who can create resale platforms, and utilities who will buy energy data for grid management. The diversity of end purchasers is just one of the reasons building owners and managers should seriously consider this. It is also virtually recession-proof, proof as the more challenging the economic times, the more people are looking for answers, and data-driven insights are essential.
