63% operators expect a major shift towards Professionally Managed Shared Accommodation Facilities: CBRE- SAPFI Survey
Student Accommodation Providers Association of India (SAPFI) and CBRE South Asia Pvt. Ltd., India’s leading real estate consulting firm- today released the findings of its survey on Shared Accommodation – one of the growing segments of the real estate sector in the country. According to the survey titled “RE-STARTING THE ENGINE - WAYFORWARD FOR THE SHARED ACCOMMODATION SEGMENT”, 63 % operators are expecting a major shift towards professionally managed facilities.
CBRE Highlights:
Professionally managed student accommodation and co-living facilities to emerge as the preferred choice for tenants as higher value will be attached to cleanliness and hygiene going forward.
72% operators expect business to return to its normalcy within a period of less than of 6 months.
Over 50% of the operators will be looking at expanding bed capacity.
Operators will witness a shift towards single and double occupancy rooms. Revenue share with the developer/landowner will be the most preferred operating model.
89 percent of survey participants feel the need for classifying professionally managed student accommodation & co-living segments as a separate asset class by the government.
The findings further highlight that the product mix and offerings by operators will witness a shift towards single and double occupancy rooms given the need and consumer preference for social distancing. A higher value will be attached to cleanliness and hygiene standards of these new asset classes or professionally managed student accommodation and co-living facilities. Additionally, over 50% of the operators responded that they will be looking at expanding the bed capacity in their facilities.
The Survey was jointly conducted by SAPFI and CBRE during the month of June and July 2020 and included operators from the Professionally Managed Student Accommodation (PMSA) and co-living segments.
Commenting on the survey findings, Anshuman Magazine, Chairman and CEO, India, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa, CBRE said “Professionally managed shared accommodations are considered to be globally established asset classes in the real estate industry and developers are increasingly viewing co-living/student housing as a natural extension of their businesses. The Covid-19 global pandemic has clearly brought forward the need for quality student accommodation facilities across the country. Besides, going forward health and wellness will be the major focus among developers, and they will be putting a lot of emphasis on integrated developments as well.”
Kaushal Mahan, Convener, SAPFI commented “The Covid-19 pandemic has severely impacted the booming shared accommodation industry including student housing and co-living. But with the changing consumer preference, the industry will soon be turning the present crisis into an opportunity and contributing to the government vision on “Getting Growth Back”. To ensure this growth, we will closely be continuing to work with the Center and State Governments for further bringing favourable policy and regulatory ecosystem for our members”.
On the survey findings, Rami Kaushal, Managing Director, Consulting & Valuation Services, CBRE, said “India has seen remarkable progress in the education sector and student enrolment from across the world. The safety of tenants has always been the top-most priority for operators. The industry is also relooking at the design aspects of upcoming properties in order to suit the needs for safety and to ensure that social distancing norms are being met. Moving ahead, revenue sharing model is expected to become the preferred business model as it helps mitigate the risk between operators and developer/landowners.”
- Please tell us about your organization and its objectives.
HelixSense is formed out of constant need to change the way facilities are being managed in primitive non-efficient way with heavy dependency on Human intervention and control. HelixSense is a Digital Transformation Organisation having an Integrated platform with power of IoT & proprietary sensors, edge analyzer which can transform the asset Management.
HelixSense is disrupting Asset Management. We seek to provide organizations with the actionable data they need to reduce hidden costs, risks, and incident occurrence. HelixSense enhances the awareness of stakeholders across all departments by empowering them to collectively make decisions that benefit the organization as a whole.
Our goal is to help organisations maximize the long-term value of their assets by creating a culture of continuous improvement and global standards, where information is your greatest asset. - What are the key challenges confronting facilities managers in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era?
During COVID 19 pandemic, Occupancies at client offices was reduced to 5% or ever less, moreover, the clients are promoting work from home culture to keep their employees safe and keep the business continuity. This has made many of the builders to rethink and re-strategies to keep their workplace safe, secure, and efficient by reducing their Cost of Operations as well as manpower dependencies.
This shift had put many IPCs/ facilities managers under constant pressure to ensure equipment uptime, optimize costs, reduce manpower, and add value to your organization’s core business. While delivering the above, the expectations are mitigated and managed risk operations, which is one of the core value of HelixSense. - How do you feel IoT can assist facilities managers in improving asset management within their organisations?
IoT has a great power in transforming facilities but at times it is underutilized or delivered with very low value to match the cost. Moreover, many organisation claim to put IoT by placing some sensors and gaining data, however, they don’t know the inferences and importance of data with mathematical model which can bring high value-added services.
IoT power can only be seen when all the assets are connected and integrated in a platform like HelixSense, which helps in getting view of asset traceability, asset health, accurate data points, data analytics, oncondition monitoring and predictive management. Also, it has an edge over traditional BMS’s since IoT is constantly changing and improving and has lot of flexibility to upgrade without heavy cost investments. - Does it help in better COVID-19 protocol management? If so, how?
Yes is the answer! Our solutions helped clients to manage and navigate during the stressed COVID-19 managed requirement. We had started developing the products & Solutions during April Month onwards. We were helping our clients with the best technologies and global protocol for managing their facilities.
We have also introduced our range of UVC disinfection products which can be connected with IoT to give traceability in disinfection and sanitization. - Which are some of your key solutions that you would like to highlight here?
We are consulting lot of large organisations, builders with multiple building and IPC of some of our solutions, which can really transform their operations and engineering. Some of the key solutions being proposed are:
a. Engineering & Facility Management Automation with IoT based strategy which can bring down their cost up to 35% post implementations
b. Smart Washrooms which can help with proactive/data driven operation and saving up to 30% on headcounts and consumables.
c. Occupancy Management & other product / solutions for your back to office compliances
d. Touch free operations like Green Checklist of engineer & Housekeeping operations / Facility management
