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The Key to Understanding Your Market

As a recent addition to the Turner Drake team, one of the first major jobs I worked on was collecting data for our December 2015 Market Survey of leasable office and warehouse space in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Given my experience with Newfoundland was limited to a couple trips to visit my girlfriend’s family, being tasked with getting a handle on an entire city’s office and warehouse market seemed a daunting task. However, it has proven to be one of the best learning experiences during my first year at Turner Drake. As a newcomer to the real estate industry, speaking with building owners and managers gave me insight into the issues they were facing, and a more intimate understanding of the market in Newfoundland than I expected to develop in such a short period of time. After such a positive experience, I was excited to be tasked with collecting data on the St. John’s market again for our June 2016 survey.

The June survey is smaller than the December survey: we only gather data on the office markets, with the exception of HRM, where we surveyed both the office and warehouse markets. Don’t think that this means it was an easy job: at Turner Drake, “smaller” rarely means small.

To ensure our data collection met the rigorous standards of our ISO 9001:2008 quality standard certification, our surveyors undertook a month-long data gathering process. We began by compiling an inventory of every new office or industrial space with a minimum rentable area of 5,000 ft.2 in our five target markets (St. John’s, Moncton, Fredericton, Saint John and Halifax). As the number of cranes on our cities’ skylines attest, this was no mean feat. However, this was just the beginning.

The meat and potatoes of the data gathering process is distributing and following up on more than 550 surveys for our June report (and more than 900 for the December version). We begin by sending every one of our contacts an Inventory Form for each of the buildings they are responsible for. This year, we took a bold step forward and sent the survey forms by… email! If we’re lucky, the respondents complete the form with information on the size of their buildings, the current vacancies, the rental rates they are realizing, and a few other pertinent details. Then they check the little box saying “Please send me a copy of the final report” and we’re done. However, things are rarely that easy, and Turner Drake surveyors won’t rest until the job is done! If we don’t receive a response, we send a follow-up email, and if that isn’t returned, we call, and if our calls aren’t returned, we call again… and again… and again… until we get the data we need.

After all of the data has been gathered, it is entered into our CompuVal™ system. CompuVal™ allows us to track vacancy and rental rates over time for both individual buildings and entire markets, as well as analyze the data to predict future trends. To ensure no errors are made, our surveyors review each other’s work, “cleaning up” typos or other mistakes.

All told, the data gathering process can take several hundred hours to complete. For our June surveys, our four surveyors spent more than 330 hours gathering data. This is the point where we turn things over to our Economic Intelligence Unit, who work their magic by taking the raw data and turning it into a vibrant picture of the local market.

If you’re interested in learning more about our Market Surveys or purchasing a copy, give our Economic Intelligence Unit a call at (902)-429-1811 or visit our website.


Written by Colin Walsh, Consultant in our Lasercad® and Valuation Divisions. To learn more about Colin, visit our Facebook page to see his Featured Consultant article.

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