Case study: How Dealroom helps CBRE to adapt to changing European real estate markets and compete as an influential thought leader

CBRE is the largest commercial real estate services company in the world, providing exceptional outcomes or clients in 100+ countries.

Challenges

  • Identifying opportunities in the continuously changing real estate market
  • Collecting relevant information on the new type of commercial tenant
  • A stagnating market with lower volumes driving the need to be better informed

Solutions

  • Access to Dealroom’s rigorously vetted and verified data
  • Relevant intel on Europe’s most promising companies to identify and attract dynamic new occupiers
  • Using Dealroom data to make better market predictions

Results

  • Dealroom enables better sourcing and vetting of deals, boosting transaction volume
  • Better positioning towards difficult-to-reach entrepreneurial tech companies
  • Collaborative research with Dealroom supports CBRE’s position as a thought leader

“The nature of occupiers is changing from large corporates towards entrepreneurial companies. We didn’t have much information on these types of companies before. That’s what Dealroom is providing; that’s their relevance.”

Joep van VlietDirector

Challenge: identifying opportunities in a changing market

It’s tough to stay ahead of the competition when the markets in which you operate are changing at pace. This is something that CBRE had grown familiar with over the last few years. Today’s commercial real estate markets are very different than they were five years ago, due to factors such as space availability.

“The city of Amsterdam, for example, is fully let,” says Joep van Vliet, Director at CBRE Netherlands. “There’s virtually no available space, and that means companies do not relocate anymore. It’s challenging to operate in a market that’s not dynamic.”

For CBRE, the changing nature of the markets has put them in a challenging situation. “A key factor of today’s markets is that occupiers tend to be more volatile and short-termed in the sense that they expect to grow, sometimes exponentially, within a year or two,” Joep explains. “What’s happening is a distinct change in the corporate profile, away from large corporates and government organisations towards entrepreneurial companies who have markedly different needs.”

Daan van der Velden, Senior Consultant at CBRE Netherlands, notes that to meet the needs of this new type of occupier, CBRE needs considerably more information than it can get through conventional sources. “CBRE is regarded as one of the thought leaders in many of the cities where it is present,” Daan says. “Creating insights beyond the standard real estate analysis helps us to look ahead to what our clients should prepare for.”

“Unfortunately, due to the tenant profile, we didn’t have that much information on these types of companies.”

Solution: a trusted collaboration with Dealroom to build intel from the ground up

The team at CBRE Netherlands connected with Dealroom to see if we could help with their search for more information.

“Landlords want to fill their office building with new tenants and it’s our job to provide information on those tenants,” Daan explains. “Before, we could only say ‘well, you can focus on technology companies’ but we couldn’t really dive into that sector. Through Dealroom, we’re able to pinpoint much more detail on these companies. We are now able to give far more enhanced advise regarding this growing potential target group, ‘within tech, you have varied industries, which comprises of companies with different business models, at certain levels of growth’

What kind of data is CBRE looking for? “First, it’s data on employees and employee growth,” Daan clarifies. “This shows if a company is expanding. Then we look at funding rounds to see if a company is healthy. Whenever there’s a certain funding round we can predict that, within a certain time, the business will grow. If that’s combined with business-model data, we can make these predictions even more accurate.”

“Industry is an aggregate-level data point. It tells us something about a city. If I were to zoom into certain cities I would see, for instance, that health tech companies are prevalent within Utrecht; in Amsterdam, it’s enterprise software companies. This tells us something about the companies, how they are evolving, and how an owner should look at them in order to attract them. The data points are interlinked.”

Result: better deal sourcing and intelligent reporting, supporting CBRE’s position as a market leader

Thanks to Dealroom’s data, CBRE has gained significant insight regarding the dynamics of small entrepreneurial companies which, to some extent, predict the real estate markets of the future. “This is important in two worlds,” Joep explains. “In municipalities where CBRE is seen as an expert, we are continuously aware of what’s happening and we are staying ahead in the market. At a business level, we use Dealroom’s data to target and connect with difficult-to-reach tech companies. It’s about adapting to evolving market circumstances. That’s what Dealroom is providing. That’s the relevance.”

As an example, Daan points out the fact that CBRE is not only relying on Dealroom’s SAAS application but has also collaborated with Dealroom on a research project to gain deeper market insights. “Whereas Dealroom focuses on business models, growth metrics and funding, we were looking for the match with location factors,” Daan explains. “Specifically, we plotted all the companies in Dealroom’s platform and zeroed in on the map. Looking at each city, where are these companies located? Can we make a connection between the size of a company or industry and their location? Can we see a difference in the type of real estate these companies are occupying? Based on these data sets, we were able to draw many useful conclusions.”

When asked if CBRE would consider integrating with Dealroom across other European offices, Daan responds unhesitatingly. “The answer is easy because market change is not just bound to the Netherlands. Dealroom is focused on every European country, and worldwide. I foresee that their data will be as helpful to our other offices as it is to our team in the Netherlands. Dealroom also has connections with local tech hubs and that combination, for any CBRE office, is very useful.”

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