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When Denholtz Associates, a privately held real estate development, investment and management company, looked to modernize the way it managed its property portfolio by creating an online investment platform where investors can access information in real time, the response was positive.
But President Stephen Cassidy soon realized that the company’s leasing cycle did not align with the new asset management process, leaving the revenue-generating part of the company operating inefficiently.
With a portfolio of 4.6M rentable square feet spread across New Jersey and Florida, communication gaps emerged between the Denholtz team and third-party leasing agents. Sharing accurate data at a quick pace became a challenge.
“We were getting very frustrated about the inefficiency between our team and our third-party leasing teams,” Cassidy said. “It’s very hard to be aligned with a group of people that you don’t see on a regular basis. Trying to communicate net effective rent to those folks was extremely frustrating.”
Cassidy knew he needed a more robust solution to the problem and a way to keep both investors and tenants happy. After hearing about VTS, Denholtz signed up for the commercial real estate platform and onboarded its portfolio.
Since utilizing VTS, the company's net effective rents on average have increased over 10%, Cassidy said.
Founded in New York in 2012 as View The Space, VTS gives asset managers and leasing teams a unified platform to track deals, manage space and collaborate seamlessly in real time. On the landlord side of the platform, users can monitor leasing pipelines, view dynamic stacking plans and detailed analysis on every deal, among other features.
VTS’s emergence in the CRE market comes as the industry changes its relationship with technology. Five years ago, real estate companies were using software as an accounting tool, Cassidy said. Platforms like VTS have become an integral part of the asset management process, helping users increase revenue, improve efficiency and minimize risk.
A feature that piqued Cassidy's interest in the platform was the ability to effectively track net effective rents, net present values, internal rates of return and concessions on every deal. In a business where profitability hinges around how quickly Denholtz places new tenants in a space and secures renewals from existing ones, VTS helps make the process more efficient and transparent.
“The teams now have the ability to understand our targets, our business practices, our net effective rents. And, in real time, we’re able to see what they're doing, whether they're having showings and what stage of any lease transaction that they might be in,” Cassidy said.
Using VTS, the Denholtz team can also keep investors up-to-date immediately with the leasing process, rather than making reports or having to get the leasing team on the phone.
Denholtz celebrates its 65th anniversary this year, but the firm’s commitment to investing in the future of commercial real estate technology has kept it young at heart. In an industry looking toward tech for new solutions, it is a necessary evolution.
“Companies not using new technologies in our area in the future will not succeed, so we had to be as much on the forefront as we can,” Cassidy said.
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