Here at REFIRE we’ve been keeping a watchful eye on the so-called Corona Real Estate Index, a useful barometer which measures the business temperature on Germany’s building sites and in its ongoing project developments.
The barometer was devised by emproc SYS, the Munich-headquartered specialist for planning, monitoring and cost control on complex building projects, and is carried out weekly by cybersecurity and risk management company Alyne under strictly confidential conditions to ensure absolute anonymity. It is supported by many companies within emproc’s network, such as Cushman & Wakefield, Real Estate Lounge, RICS, Alyne, Fraunhofer, Norton Rose Fulbright, building radar, alphazirkel, Capmo, Flowinvest and Mailänder Consult. For the latest reading, more than 100 participants responded to the survey and provided information on about 170 project developments.
The barometer reading for the 9th week of monitoring (Week 22) shows the temperature remaining stable compared to four weeks ago, with more than nine out of ten companies reporting no problems at all with the supply of materials. In terms of personnel, the picture is not so rosy, with only half of respondents experiencing no staff shortages. New also is that 8% are definitely struggling with medium staffing problems – a situation that did not prevail four weeks ago.
In building materials, 92% of respondents cited no constraints in accessing all the materials they needed, up strongly on 78% the previous week. This indicates a strong normalisation in the supply chains of materials, at least.
Moritz Koppe, managing director of emproc SYS and the initiator of the index, said: "If we evaluate the situation over the month of May, we can see its stabilization. However, we need to observe how the situation on the labor market in the German real estate industry develops in the coming weeks. There is a discrepancy between the ever improving situation in the supply of materials and fluctuating results in the supply of staff".
We’re hearing a lot more about companies using PROBIS, a cloud-based multi-project controlling software which helps cost certainty and cost control at the early stages of projects and helps co-ordinate financial processes and benchmark analyses. It was developed by emproc SYS, and seems to be gaining traction, currently being used on about 150 project developments throughout Europe. REFIRE met with the company shortly after it launched PROBIS in 2018, and it’s been growing fast since then.
