Winning tactical strategies for CRE leaders, asset managers and CRE operators

In episode 42 of their Peak Property Performance Podcast, Bill Douglas and Drew Hall explore why digital infrastructure is one of the most valuable—and most overlooked—assets in commercial real estate

They discuss why owners often treat technology as an expense instead of an investment, how fragmented networks increase costs, and why understanding your building’s digital infrastructure is essential for operational efficiency, tenant satisfaction, and future AI initiatives.

• Digital infrastructure in commercial real estate

• Why building owners should own their networks

• Reducing duplicate technology costs

• Digital due diligence for property acquisitions

• AI-ready buildings and data strategy

• Property technology infrastructure

• Operational efficiency through connected systems

• Digital asset management

Bill: Most owners think about buildings as sticks, bricks, glass, and amenities, but digital infrastructure is an asset too. Instead of treating technology as an unavoidable expense, owners should view it as an investment that generates operational value and long-term returns.

Bill: We recently reviewed a property where the owner believed they owned their network, only to discover the internet provider actually controlled it. That meant they couldn’t access or fully utilize the infrastructure they thought belonged to them, limiting future flexibility and value.

Drew: Just as buildings don’t install multiple plumbing or electrical systems, they shouldn’t operate multiple disconnected technology networks. A well-designed digital infrastructure reduces unnecessary hardware, simplifies operations, and lowers both capital and operating costs.

Read the article in full

Andrew Stanton CEO Proptech-PR

The Toll Road Problem: LMS, Landmark

Thought leadership by Olivier Jauniaux Founder of NestLink

“On 6 July, 2026, LMS, Landmark Information Group, InfoTrack and Decision First announced they would work together to let trusted information move between lenders and conveyancers through the systems those firms already use. This is perhaps the most important thing to happen for UK property transactions all year. But also, the least verifiable. The four claim that they collectively support more than 90% of UK lenders and residential conveyancing firms. The initial targets are digital identity, mortgage offer distribution, redemption statements, certificates of title, electronic signing, charge registration, and funds settlement.

Details of how anyone actually participates will follow in due course. Note the wording carefully: ninety percent of lenders and conveyancing firms is a statement about organisations served, not about transaction volume, revenue, or daily usage. It is a genuinely impressive figure. It is not a market share. What has been announced, then, is an intention. There is no published architecture, no commercial model, no timetable, no named pilot lender, and no measurable target.

For an industry that has spent fifteen years being sold various competing platforms, an initiative whose entire proposition is that you do not have to buy a platform is either the most sophisticated thing anyone has done in this market, or a very well-attended meeting. The distinction will not be settled by the press release.

The industry does not have a software problem

Every professional in a residential transaction already has software. The agent has a CRM, the conveyancer has case management, the lender has an origination stack and a panel portal. Conveyancers still use the old scanner on a daily basis, but things are changing, even for them. Yet, property chains still take months. This is because the expensive work does not happen inside any of those systems.

It happens in the gaps between them, where a human being downloads something from one screen, checks it, and types it into another. Where responsibility for the next step is ignored or at worse, unknown. The last decade of digitisation happened without interoperability and simply moved the re-keying from the filing cabinet to the second monitor. 

The alliance’s implicit claim is therefore more interesting than its explicit one. It is not saying the sector needs better tools. It is saying the sector’s tools are fine and the connective tissue between them is missing, which is an unusually honest thing for four software companies to admit in public. Interoperability is a governance problem wearing a technical costume

The Digital Property Market Steering Group’s Smart Property Data Trust Framework is fairly blunt about what a shared rulebook actually has to establish: who is allowed in, which data can be relied on, where it came from, when it was last updated, what the consumer has authorised, and, most awkwardly, who is liable when a field is wrong.

HM Land Registry’s own business planning points in the same direction, toward common data standards, reusable digital identity, and wider use of UPRNs as the key that lets records find each other. None of that is an integration task. It is a constitutional one. Open Banking is the analogy everyone reaches for, and it flatters property. Open Banking had a handful of regulated institutions, one regulator with a mandate, and a single canonical fact per customer. Property has hundreds of data sources, a dozen liability regimes, councils at wildly different stages of digital maturity, and facts that are genuinely contestable. A bank balance is either right, or it is a scandal.

Read the article in full

Andrew Stanton CEO Proptech-PR

The UK rental market just changed hands. The tenant sets the terms now

Lettings operators now realise that their ‘new’ tech savvy tenants, expect an instant 24/7 level of service as standard

Thought Leadership by Adam Pigott CEO of tlyfe and OpenBrix | Consumer-Centric Property Platform 

‘Tenants weren’t the ones deciding that renting should run on a 9-to-5 clock. That decision was made for them, decades ago, by an industry that never had to move any faster. Until now.’ – Adam Pigott. 

The clock tenants are done waiting on

Picture the actual moment. You’re scrolling listings at 10 pm, you find the one, and you’re ready to move. Then you wait. Wait for the agency to open at 9 am. Wait for a call back. Wait to find out if it’s even still available by the time anyone picks up. Tenants have stopped accepting that gap. They want to check a listing, work out what they can afford, and apply the moment they’ve decided, not eleven hours later, once someone else’s office opens.

What they’re handing over to get there

That’s only half of it. The other half is what tenants are asked to give up to move that fast. Every application still means the same payslips, the same bank statements, the same proof of Right to Rent, sent to a new referencing company every time they move house, then sent again to the next one, and the next. Tenants read the same data breach headlines the rest of us do, and they’re asking a fair question: why does a new firm need my sensitive documents every single time, when the three before it already have a copy?

The deposit problem underneath all of it

Then there’s the deposit, often the largest sum a tenant hands over in one go, protected in tlyfe‘s case through our partner TDS. Getting it back, along with a clean rental history to show the next landlord, matters more to most tenants than almost anything else in the process. Losing track of maintenance requests, repair records, or who agreed to what mid-tenancy is exactly how deposits end up disputed, and histories end up messy.

Renting is the last thing still gated behind office hours

Your bank works at 2 am. Your food order can be delivered at 2 am. Your taxi can reach you at 2 am. Housing is one of the only parts of life still gated behind office hours, and tenants have run out of patience for that gap. They want the same 24/7 control over their housing data that they already have over everything else that matters to them.

340,000 tenants are already doing this

340,000 tenants are living this way on tlyfe right now. Verify your identity, your employment, your Right to Rent, once, then decide who sees it and when. You control that, not a new referencing company every time you move. That single change means you’re not rebuilding your case from scratch at every viewing, and your record, from move-in to move-out, stays with you instead of getting scattered across three different companies’ systems.

Andrew Stanton CEO Proptech-PR