by Shane Henson — July 15, 2011—The Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) has unveiled standards-based technology that it says will enable the rapid, accurate creation and communication of lease summary documents—the essential information that lies at the heart of the management of leased assets.
Currently, lease summaries are produced in text formats that are transcribed and re-keyed multiple times—a way of working that is fraught with delays, errors and inefficiencies, say OSCRE officials. Bringing together sponsors Aviva Investors, Canada Life Investments, CB Richard Ellis, Hammerson, Jones Lang LaSalle, Land Securities, Legal and General Property and British Land, together with leading software vendors, OSCRE has facilitated the creation of new standards-based technology that removes these challenges and opens the door to new efficiency opportunities for all parties involved.
There are already software solutions available and ready to import lease summary data, and now there are solutions ready for the export of standards-compliant data files, meaning that lawyers can be better positioned to support the needs of their property investment customer base. Investment firms now need only to instruct their lawyers to send lease summary information to the assigned property management firm in electronic format and the benefits of doing so will begin to accrue.
Graeme Lambert, property finance director for Canada Life Investments, said that Canada Life Investments engaged with this initiative because it could see the benefits of establishing standards for improving data flows between all parties: property owners, investors, lawyers, surveyors, managers and administrators.
“This project has an abundant list of advantages for both ourselves and for the parties we work with in lease documentation processing,” says Lambert. “We see a significant time-saving opportunity and even more importantly, the chance to improve accuracy with the layers of re-entering critical lease-related information greatly removed.
