James Carpenter, Associate Director, GIS, NEWMARK KNIGHT FRANK

Data driven decision making has become a key trend in commercial real estate.  As GIS professionals, it is crucial to put spatial technology in the hands of those decision makers. At Newmark we push web applications as they provide a wealth ofinformation at the user’s fingertips.We have real estate professionals drawing their own insights from map applications built on ESRI Web App, Dashboard, and Experience Builders. Different sharing options like web publishing supplement and our mapping group’s product.

The GIS Group at Newmark has fostered a series of analyses around four major extensions in ESRI: Business Analyst, Network Analyst, Spatial Analyst, and 3D Analyst. Each one of these extensions plays a conceptual role in what we are achieving in that area. Our GIS department is doing 3D visualization, complex network routing, data analytics, and web development. ESRI’s advancements in those areas have dictated our road map.

From a visualization basis, Newmark is using a combination of ArcGIS Pro, Desktop, and Illustrator for most visual products. Maps continue to dominate our production line, and most efforts outside of map creation goes into automating and improving them. Graphic design programs are used to enhance some visuals to best communicate the information. A few key web publishing advancements from ESRI have been game changers.

Vector tile publishing has enabled us to get national suitability layers out quickly, and in front of brokers and clients. Publishing custom symbology through ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online has also been a valuable new resource.This ability to full manage the look of web maps in desktop reduces time restyling the layers once they are published. Finally, the AIX file Illustrator export makes ArcGIS Pro an everyday program for GIS departments across all industries that generate polished static maps.

ArcGIS Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud extension has enabled graphics and marketing professionals to access spatial data in Adobe. Newmark is publishing web layers that can be directly accessed by multiple graphics designers to create static content. Adobe’s rich creative environment is at the heart of our design department. The extension has enabled collaboration with the GIS group through a common technical language and program.

The ESRI Business Analyst data model is at the core of our GIS Group’s strategy. During site selection and location analysis, Business Analyst data is directly contributing to most location decisions. There is also valuable data continuously coming out from other private and public sources, which we consume through ESRI products.

Open data is driving GIS technology providers like ESRI to develop products that can harness its power. Data.census.gov can access and map stacks of demographic data of the United States. Business Analyst’s demographics and consumer spending data complements government data well. The ability to bring these assets into the ESRI environment has enabled our department at Newmark to be confident working on any real estate project across the United States. We have belief that there will be decent local data to enhance and utilize if needed.

You can now import a full 3D building footprint model of Toronto or San Francisco from government web sites and extrude their content in ArcGIS Pro.

That is touching on many disciplines that GIS Analysts were not typically doing before a Newmark in a short amount of time. Our in-house 3D building layers come from open data resources and are managed in ArcGIS Pro. Newmark has been an avid user of other public datasets provided openly like PLUTO in New York City. Parcel based information provides users with a breadth of information about real estate and help drive deals.

Newmark is also using ESRI to visualize its own data and statistical insights. Our Research Department maintains the Newmark Data Exchange (NDX), which is a proprietary web-based property database maintained by the Newmark Research Team. It includes details on transactions, availabilities, and other market statistics. We apply this research data to visuals on Newmark’s submarket geographies as well as traditional Census geographies. Enriching these submarket polygons with the numerous variables in the ESRI Business Analyst data model provides insights into market trends.

Our GIS Group’s new Python developments are being built on Notebooks in ArcGIS Pro. The Jupyter Notebook integration has made applying scripts in the same ESRI session seamless.  There is large community developing ESRI scripts and code now being hosted on sites like Github. This movement is enabling GIS Analysts to bring in many types of spatial data and perform new operations on it in one environment.

As ESRI continues to develop their products GIS departments in real estate will follow suit. The integration of ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online should be at the center of Newmark GIS strategy in the near term. GIS, R, and Python are bridging the gap between spatial analysis and data science. There are some exciting possibilities with the Statistical Analyst extension and new data engineering tools used with Business Analyst data that will drive data driven decisions in the real estate industry.