A few hours after the end of the 2018 edition of Simi, what should we remember about this major crossroads in the real estate industry? We could have told you about new attendance records, a sign that the sector is one of the leading French industries in terms of GDP (nearly 11%) and jobs (more than 2 million). And above all, one of the most promising when you look at the growth potential and the appetite of companies to recruit in the years to come, according to the first elements of the 3rd edition of the Real Estate & Urban Employment Monitor conducted by EY, in partnership with the Palladio Foundation and Business Immo.
But we prefer to insist on this new dynamic that is driving real estate where the main subject of value creation no longer revolves around square meters, but rather the synthesis between the container — the building — and the content — namely the services offered there.
Real estate operators are increasingly mastering the former, have learned the lessons of the past and are all projecting with the same impetus towards the building of tomorrow, which must be energy-efficient, environmentally resilient, efficient for its occupants, reversible or mutable for its occupants, reversible or mutable according to uses, open to the city and no longer focused on itself.
On the content, let's be honest, they're starting. The first step is to understand that the tenant — that is, the cash flow — is little more than a user. He is a customer! The semantic movement of Gecina, with its new YouFirst commercial brand, is a further sign of this awareness. The temptation for some lessors is to move to the exploitation stage and to operate all or part of their buildings themselves. The explosion of coworking and models of WeWork or Spaces gave ideas, for example from Covivio with its subsidiary Wellio.
The next question is who will capture this famous value creation? Today, players in the “container” and the “content” coexist without much friction in a market driven by the short-term economic situation. But with new technologies, new players want to enter the building, and not just a few PropTech start-ups. The Gafa have understood that manufacturing the city is an industry of the future.
The nightmare for real estate operators and investors would be to become (or remain) box makers and collectors. A bit like in the early 1980s, when IBM — the world's largest computer manufacturer — let value slip away from its operating system provider, a certain Microsoft. A scenario that no one wants to see, but that no one completely dismisses.