Track2Realty: Leading property professionals from around the world have been appointed to create the first global standard for measuring property. This week the International Property Measurement Standards Coalition (IPMSC) selected 19 real estate experts from around the world to join its Standards Setting Committee to develop a global standard for measuring property.
The Standards Setting Committee includes experts with first-hand knowledge in 50 countries, across five continents. It will act independently and is tasked with the job of drafting and consulting industry on a global standard measurement methodology.
Currently, the way property assets – such as office, residential, retail and industrial – are measured can vary considerably from country to country. With so many different methods in use, it makes it difficult for global investors and occupiers to accurately compare space.
With the implementation of a global property measurement standard, properties will be consistently measured; creating a more transparent marketplace, greater public trust, stronger investor confidence, and increased market stability. The standard will have a significant impact on the way property is measured, leading to improvements in valuation and financial reporting consistency across international markets.
Standards Setting Committee members include academics, real estate fund and asset managers, residential professionals, valuers, and specialists in development and construction.
“Property is a global business for international investors, corporate occupiers and their advisers, but floor space measuring practices vary from country to country and even between markets in the same country.
Encouraged by our first meeting at the World Bank, we intend to create standards of measurement that will not only complement international financial reporting and valuation standards but also enable the collection and use of reliable data across worldwide markets,” said Max Crofts, Chair, Standard Setting Committee.
“The committee has been set to meet the challenging task of drawing together the intelligence that has gone before us across the world over the past decades and then creating what must be regarded as the World’s Best Practice for the Measurement of Buildings. There are many Standards in existence across the world but this has been largely uncoordinated. There remain inconsistencies in the manner measurements are carried across countries. For example, in India, the concept of super areas have been used to include outdoor swimming pools, stairs, common areas such as pavements; in parts of the Middle East floor areas can include the hypothetical maximum number of floors that could be built on the existing foundations; and in Australia, measurements have included outdoor parking spaces, even when they are not physically adjoined to the property itself. The Committee Members are focussed on ensuring the Standard is World’s Best Practice. We will know that we have succeeded when the new Standard is embraced globally by the Property Industry,” said Allen Crawford, Vice Chair, Standard Setting Committee.
The Standards Setting Committee will start work on the drafting of the new methodology immediately and aims to have a draft ready for widespread consultation in the early part of 2014.
