The Unlocking Value Bulletin #9
Market Shifts, Emerging Opportunities & Bold Moves in CRE
Welcome to a new issue of the Unlocking Real Estate Value newsletter. Each week I will provide you with exclusive advice and professional insights to help you realise long-term value through real estate development.
This week I have curated a list of real estate stories that have caught my attention in my LinkedIn feed.
This week my curated list of real estate stories returns to your inbox.
The AI hype keeps growing and I’m seeing a growth in AI applications on CRE gathering pace. Also seeing some interesting shifts across different real estate sectors, with a growing investment interest from UK funds towards offices.
An interesting piece is illustrating how Google is looking to transform redundant office business parks into major data center infrastructure districts. The market keeps being challenging, but is also dynamic and asset classes are being rethought across the spectrum.
Let’s dive in.
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Latest Unlocking Value Bulletin
1. L&G developer: Londoners don’t want cookie-cutter high streets
L&G’s Denz Ibrahim asserts that high-street regeneration hinges on unique independent retailers, not cloned chain formats. He highlights L&G’s New Acres mixed-use scheme in Wandsworth and urges developers to curate place-based experiences reflecting local culture, flexible lease options, and community partnerships to drive footfall, loyalty, and sustainable margins growth.
2. Building CUSTOM versions of ChatGPT to execute specific CRE tasks.
PropTech builders are rolling out tailored GPT-4 agents trained on internal deal data to automate repetitive CRE analysis. Examples include GPTs that populate DCF models, draft investment memos, and interrogate rent rolls in seconds. Early adopters report 70 % time savings and faster underwriting cycles while keeping proprietary insights secure internally.
3. The UK Funds are back in town!
After two quiet years, domestic open-ended UK real-estate funds are again deploying capital, buoyed by stabilising interest-rate expectations and a 15 % pricing reset. Managers report net inflows, target prime logistics, life-science campuses, and living sectors, and anticipate a recovery in investment volumes by early 2026, driving renewed competition nationwide.
4. Interesting report from CapitaLand on the living sector in Europe.
CapitaLand’s inaugural Europe Living report finds operational residential assets delivering resilient 95 % occupancy and inflation-linked rent growth, outperforming other real-estate classes. The study highlights demographic tailwinds, constrained new supply, and growing institutional appetite for build-to-rent, student housing and co-living, especially in Germany, Spain and the Nordics over the coming decade.
5. Hyperscalers are expected to invest $2T in #datacenters over the next five years.
Blackstone and industry analysts forecast hyperscale cloud providers will pour nearly $2 trillion into global data-centre capacity by 2030 to power AI workloads. Capital will flow into high-density campuses with 100 % renewable power, driving surging demand for grid connectivity, specialised construction, and land near low-carbon energy sources and efficient cooling.
6. Thrilled to see Retrofit at Scale officially launch
The UK’s Retrofit at Scale initiative has formally launched, uniting local authorities, landlords, contractors and green-finance providers to deliver deep energy upgrades across 500,000 homes by 2030. The programme standardises digital passports, off-site fabrication and blended funding models to cut emissions 60 %, create 200,000 jobs, and combat fuel poverty nationwide.
7. They could've retired after $100M exits.
Serial founders who banked nine-figure exits are re-entering proptech, citing unsolved pain points and the thrill of building. Their new ventures focus on AI-driven asset-management platforms offering predictive maintenance, automated leasing and ESG analytics. Deep operational experience and refreshed cap tables give them speed, credibility and capital efficiency again.
8. So I built an AI automation to accelerate my learning curve.
Houston-based broker Topher Stephenson built a no-code workflow that scrapes CRE headlines every Friday, pipes them through Anthropic’s Claude, and emails a submarket-tagged digest to speed his local-market mastery. The one-hour build showcases how lightweight AI automations can replace manual clipping, reinforcing knowledge retention and freeing time for deals.
9. BOOM. Google just revolutionized the CRE space.
At Google Cloud Next, Alphabet unveiled multimodal search and vector-enabled BigQuery agents that query property data via natural language. Early adopters like JLL demonstrate site-selection chatbots producing zoning insights in seconds. Analysts say these enterprise-grade AI services could commoditise descriptive analytics, pushing CRE firms toward differentiation in proprietary data assets.
10. Multimillion-dollar portfolio. 15 years of raising from Blackstone and KKR.
Veteran developer Bhargav Narang explains why he is pivoting from institutional giants after 15 years, citing onerous exclusivity clauses, delayed decision‑making and fee compression. Instead, he will syndicate deals directly with family offices, maintaining alignment, flexibility and quicker closes while leveraging his track record across value‑add office and industrial portfolios.
That’s all for today.
See you next week.
— Carlo
Founder and Managing Director Benigni
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This post is sponsored by Benigni a specialist development manager working with international investors to realise long-term value through optimised development strategies. To learn more click this link to our website.
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