Commentary

Forecasting the future of commercial real estate

With MIT’s Real Estate Innovation Lab, we help our clients stay on the pulse of new real estate trends and technology – helping them future-proof their real estate.

May 22, 2018

Imagine a future where 3D printing and robotics create buildings that build themselves, where connected global databases use blockchain to execute traditional title and transaction services, where tenants come to work and leave their cars in autonomous parking structures.

That’s the future the Real Estate Innovation Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sees, and we’re already on our way there.

The lab’s flagship project is a geospatial, geometric relational database of Manhattan, including rents, transaction prices, building mortgages, cell towers, optic cables, and more. Examining large data sets, like the ones the database provides, serves as a first step toward the lab’s goal, to forecast the industry by studying design, computation, finance and planning for buildings and cities.

Currently, the researchers are working with JLL on the Real Estate Hype Cycle, a visual representation of the maturity of real estate trends and innovations. This includes emerging technologies such as blockchain and autonomous vehicles and when they’re expected to become commonplace within the industry.

JLL became the Founding Industry Partner of MIT’s Real Estate Innovation Lab in 2016. This incredible partnership provides a wealth of research and expertise to help our clients stay on the pulse of new real estate trends and technology – even helping them to future-proof their real estate.

This week we are sponsoring MIT’s annual World Real Estate Forum, featuring industry thought leaders from over 25 countries and many of the lab’s researchers. The innovations we’ll be discussing are already changing our industry as we speak and providing a peek into the future.

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