Simon Todd
Group Head of Real Estate, JTC Group
Data is transforming institutional real estate investment, enabling high-volume asset analysis, predictive modelling for investment strategy and automating operations, reporting and asset oversight.
Institutional investors are large organisations that invest money professionally, including pension funds, insurance companies, large asset management and real estate funds. These investors add large-scale properties to their portfolio, bringing in greater capital, portfolio diversification and long-term investment strategy.
Simon Todd, Group Head of Real Estate, JTC, explains: “Institutional capital plays a fundamental role in the real estate sector, driving investment strategies that are increasingly professional, data-driven, and governed by robust reporting standards. The presence of institutional investors ensures a greater focus on governance, transparency, and long-term performance across the industry.”
Data transforms institutional real estate investment
Traditionally, real estate investment management relied on manual analysis, broker relationships, and historical sales data. In today’s digital age, data and analytics are changing the way large professional investors buy, manage, and evaluate real estate. Todd explains how the scale of institutional investment is driving a new level of sophistication in how data is managed and used across the asset lifecycle.
“Large institutional portfolios generate huge volumes of data, from property-level operational metrics to fund-level reporting,” he explains. “Managing that information securely and with strong data integrity is fundamental to the custodianship of those assets.”
“There’s growing expectation that AI tools will democratise information access across the asset management process, with key benefits including predictive modelling for investment strategy, and the automation of operations, reporting and asset oversight.”
Institutional capital plays a fundamental role in the real estate sector, driving investment strategies that are increasingly professional, data-driven, and governed by robust reporting standards. The presence of institutional investors ensures a greater focus on governance, transparency, and long-term performance across the industry
Future of institutional real estate: transparency, efficiency, and insight
According to research from Morgan Stanley, around 37% of tasks in the real estate sector could be automated using AI, representing around $34 billion in operating efficiency gains by the year 2030.1 Todd highlights that while this will have a transformative effect on the industry, real estate is still a “people trust people” environment, recognising the ongoing need for human relationships and personal connection.
“The most significant benefit of AI integration will be time,” explains Todd, “Real estate experts will be freed up from routine data processing tasks to focus on higher-level strategic analysis and decision-making.”
“There’s a perception that real estate is a simple asset class, but in practice, there are significant nuances in investor requirements, return expectations, and risk profiles,” he explains. “Meeting those changing demands requires a highly analytical approach, with data playing an increasingly central role in investment decision-making.”
Discover the data and trends driving tomorrow’s real estate market
[1] Morgan Stanley. (2025). How AI is reshaping real estate. https://tinyurl.com/mv8879w9.
