Portfolio performance metrics: The rationale and methodologies

As strategic changes on the real estate landscape evolve through greater institutional consolidation, securitisation and focus on core business, corporate real estate departments find themselves caught up in the wake of this transformation.One of the more pronounced trends concerns the occupancy status of large organisations. ln particular, there has been a gradual move away from portfolios that consist of owned assets to those that are primarily leased. Such migration in ownership positions also forces corporate real estate departments to reassess how their performance is evaluated. Under the previous construct, rental income from third party tenants provided one of the key benchmarks of how this was measured, but as assets are sold and possibly leased back, what are the indicators that now demonstrate how well a corporate real estate department is performing? This paper discusses the emerging importance of performance metrics that provide logical and repeatable benchmarks that can be used to evaluate, set targets and strategise leased portfolios.