How investor demands for transparency are reshaping valuation workflows

Why investor expectations for CRE valuations are ramping up

When it comes to valuations for commercial real estate assets, investor expectations for information and data have changed quickly and dramatically.

With higher interest rates, market repricing, and new risk factors comes the need for more vigorous underwriting.

Meanwhile, technological advances like AI and machine learning, along with data integration into centralized systems, can now process vast types and amounts of real-time data.

These developments enable fast, detailed analysis down to the sub-asset level. Studying micro-location, instant data such as listings, sales and lease comparables, occupancy, foot traffic, and demographics, reveals subtle, previously difficult to observe or quantify.

As the industry gets better at recalibrating what matters in a property valuation, it’s also becoming more effective at measuring the magnitude of these elements.

Alexander Jaffe

Senior Director, Valuation & Advisory

Consequently, data and information expectations are evolving as investors analyze properties with greater granularity. To avoid expensive errors like over- or under-valuing assets, they now want as many quantitative measurements as possible to acquire a reliable estimate of a property's worth.

They also expect transparency: the ability to see the specific reasons for the points of differentiation of specific properties, along with clear explanations as to how relevant valuation data points were determined.

Demands for transparency reveal valuation workflow weaknesses

The problem is, these ever-escalating demands for transparency reveal current workflow weaknesses in valuation and reporting.

While investors expect clear visibility into the drivers and assumptions behind every valuation and are asking tougher questions, today’s workflows make answering these queries difficult. Fragmented systems, manual inputs, and disconnected teams slow response times and make it challenging to surface consistent answers.

The most time-consuming and risky aspects of manual workflows are stitching together data sets. You want to tell the full story of what you’re seeing, but when you try to manually merge data from point A and point B, each of which is in a different format, that takes time, it takes effort, and it opens up opportunities for errors.

Alexander Jaffe

Senior Director, Valuation & Advisory

• Challenges for fund managers when investors request explanations for valuation changes; gaps in data consistency, reporting clarity, or methodology transparency can be exposed

• Challenges for valuation managers when audits or reviews question assumptions behind valuations; pressure to justify and document assumptions may reveal inefficiencies in traceability and defensibility

• Challenges for asset managers who must align modeling and asset inputs; when performance or tenant shifts prompt investor inquiries, this can highlight misalignment between asset-level inputs and valuation outcomes

Investors want visibility into how values are determined, not just the final number. But when insights are scattered across teams and systems or delayed by manual processes, and teams lack aligned data and workflows, the ability to provide clear, reliable explanations for value shifts is limited. Consequently, slow or uncertain responses to investor inquiries hinder reporting and undermine trust.

This challenge is solvable through connected workflows, which we explore in the next section.

Connected workflows = transparency + speed + defensibility

Transparency isn’t simply about reporting data; the advantage is the ability to surface and explain that data quickly and confidently.

So, how do you add speed, credibility, and robustness to the process?

With connected workflows that deliver efficiency, transparency, and defensibility.

Linked through automation and data, connected workflows enable internal teams to work faster, to minimize errors, to track changes with verifiable trails, and to make decisions based on a shared, trustworthy source of truth.

This requires scalable tech solutions that strengthen valuation workflows by enhancing data management and analysis, strengthening communication, and aligning processes with goals.

Tech solutions strengthen valuation workflow, reporting, and confidence

ARGUS Intelligence gives fund, valuation, and asset managers better control of their workflow by consolidating and centralizing data, surfacing property and portfolio insights to enhance their own analysis, and eliminating the need for time-consuming manual work.

• Enables seamless analysis and comparison across properties and portfolios, solving the problem of different data sources or property models speaking different languages

• Faster capture, mapping, and validation of data from many sources (including Excel files), significantly reducing manual data entry time and the risk of human error, and improving data quality and consistency

• Flags data irregularities or variances with machine learning models and analytics

• Eliminates data silos by consolidating information into a centralized platform, allowing users to manage, monitor, and analyze unified property data

• Streamlines workflows by providing a structured, technology-enabled framework for managing the entire valuation lifecycle, which increases operational efficiency

• Performs complex real-time calculations, such as discounted cash flow analyses and capitalization rates, allowing immediate access to up-to-date valuations

• Serves as a comprehensive modeling and monitoring platform by integrating core valuation tools with advanced analytics to provide instant performance insights

Understanding what drives a change in portfolio value can be a significant challenge without the right technology. If you’re managing 200 properties across multiple countries and the overall value shifts, tracking down which asset or assets caused the shift can be time-consuming. Manually tracking down the answer is arduous, whereas an automated workflow system could determine the answer within seconds.                 

Alexander Jaffe

Senior Director, Valuation & Advisory

Seamless valuation lifecycle

Valuation management starts with the right workflow – supported by purpose-built technology that streamlines coordination, collaboration, reviews, and reporting across the entire process.

When valuations need to be completed, ARGUS Intelligence acts as the engine behind the valuation itself, providing the modeling environment and data needed to produce consistent high-quality valuations.

Together, this workflow technology, combined with professional expertise that informs the process, creates a seamless, connected valuation lifecycle – reducing manual work, minimizing errors, and giving teams real-time visibility into progress and outcomes.

Deeper market intelligence

With ARGUS Intelligence, Benchmark Manager adds an additional layer of perspective. By tapping into the broader ARGUS dataset, teams can benchmark asset and portfolio performance against anonymized peer groups and market trends, giving valuation, asset, and fund teams a clearer and more confident read on how their results compare across the market.

And while teams can stitch together comparisons today, those efforts are often manual, partial, and time-consuming. Benchmark Manager removes that friction, making comparison easier, faster, and more consistent, while revealing the more complete story behind performance drivers. The result is a more trusted, defensible view of how assets and portfolios truly stack up.

The benefits when valuation logic is easy to explain, supported by connected data

As demand for faster valuations and faster answers accelerates, efficient valuation management software is increasingly advantageous for responding to investor queries.

Integration tools automatically integrate data from a variety of sources, such as property management programs and accounting software, into reporting tools. This ensures current data and rapid answers for questions.

By leveraging technologies like these to connect workflows, valuation transparency can become a competitive advantage. This comes from eliminating friction, ensuring every valuation is grounded in trusted information that enables teams to respond easily, with clarity, consistency, and conviction.

• Fund managers benefit when they can align the story and the math for valuation movements across asset, portfolio and benchmark data. This results in streamlined investor reporting with less effort and fewer manual reconciliations.

• Valuation managers benefit from more productive analysis, faster validation, and audit readiness when tech tools immediately identify changes or deviations from what you’re expecting for 10, 100, or 1,000 properties.

• Asset managers benefit from less manual rework across teams and more proactive performance management. Rather than laboriously adding a file to Excel and then comparing it with a new file, these technologies provide the ability to immediately see and understand changes in individual assets and measurements over time.

What’s at stake if you’re still relying on outdated manual systems? Serious risks: potentially inaccurate reporting, pulling resources away from important analyses, and even impairing the development of human capital. After all, young analysts don’t want to do manual input work.

Alexander Jaffe

Senior Director, Valuation & Advisory

Getting started to connect workflows simply begins with a conversation to identify your existing capabilities and desired outcomes.

Build transparency as a competitive advantage

For investors, transparent data ensures that information is accurate and verifiable, leading to better decision-making. For CRE firms, a confident, data-backed story behind every valuation supports your reputation and capital raising.

Build transparency as a competitive advantage for your firm – ensure it’s efficient and powered by connected workflows.

Automation-connected workflows for valuations reduce lag time, enabling CRE firms and funds to execute smarter and faster – and increase deal volume. That’s enticing!

Alexander Jaffe

Senior Director, Valuation & Advisory