From Duke Long we get the story of the new International Property Measurement Standard. This is a group of many organizations that operate globally. The problem they seek to solve is inconsistent building measurement which is a global and local problem.
If you’ve worked in CRE for any amount of time you know exactly how frustrating building measurement can be. Heaven forbid you ever try to get a building measure to balance out. Heaven forbid you wonder why buildings get larger over time even though they don’t actually do any new construction.
But as with anything of this type I wonder how this standard plans to change anything. At the end of the day CRE is often an antagonistic environment pitting landlords against tenants. The key product being sold by landlords to tenants is the square foot. The more they have, the more they can sell. Especially because they can package them in groups of their choosing. There have been previous standards and there will be disagreements to this one as well.
Ultimately it’s a solution to a real problem but tackles it from the wrong side of the fence. This standard benefits tenants and buyers but does not equally incentivize all market participants. And ultimately that is why no standard has been previously adopted.
I hope this one makes it. I will support anything that gets the job done and creates a consistent measurement environment for space. But I have my doubts on the process and strategy that this one is taking. It feels like the OSCRE standard all over again – good in theory but never actually gains wide-spread use because it doesn’t adequately capture everything necessary.