Leading the Way: Why Real Estate is Moving to Monthly, Granular Data, and What Other Industries Can Learn From This

by GLYNT AI | Jul 16, 2025 | GLYNTBlog

Many companies file their annual sustainability report, backed up by a once-a-year data marathon to get the report ready. GLYNT.AI has been seeing a steady stream of interest from real estate companies for more frequent reporting, and for more granular data – at the building and meter-level data.

This week we had a chance to sit down with a sustainability data manager for a large U.S. property holder. The conversation showed why these changes are happening. Take a look at what we learned from the conversation.

“We face a gap. Utility payment providers are great on top line costs, but they don’t provide accurate consumption data. We’re stuck with bad data when what we really want is to join cost and consumption at a more granular level for business use. With new AI technology, isn’t this more feasible than ever before?”

This opening sentiment reflects a sense of opportunity and impatience GLYNT.AI sees across many industries. In today’s world, every business practice is getting a review, with an eye to doing things better, faster and cheaper with new solutions and providers.

A speech bubble that says "we face a gap."

A speech bubble that says "just do it for me."

“We are data managers, who need to bring data to our internal stakeholders in a format that makes it business-useful for them. We don’t want to be in the day-to-day weeds of data preparation. We need companies like GLYNT.AI to bring useful clean, granular data that works. Do the data management for me, and do it in a way that makes me confident in your data.”

This clear description shows how the data manager role in sustainability is changing. Gone are the days of spreadsheets, with long nights and weekends of effort to get an annual report done. Sustainability data managers are reclaiming tasks that only humans can do, and need solutions that use technology for what it does best.

“We often see demos of sustainability software. They have great graphs and charts. But when I asked to see the data lineage and auditability of the data itself, the vendors make claims about third parties as data vendors. The software does not meet our needs for data management reporting that makes our job easier and data trails that make audits a breeze. Data governance and data is what I need.”

Data alone is not enough. The data manager is asking for support in data management, including reporting on chain of custody, data lineage, audit-ready compliance and so on. Because sustainability is such a complex area, off-the-shelf data management tools won’t work either (too much automation breakage, too much customer teaching vendors on how to set up reporting).

A speech bubble that says "data governance is a must have."

A speech bubble that says "the data must be business ready."

“My team serves business users and they are not getting the data they need when they need it. For example, if we want to invest in energy efficiency measures at a site, our site managers have to put in a budget request—backed by best available data—6 months before the spending can commence. If we are scrambling to get data months after a reporting period has closed, we’ve missed our opportunity. We need data every month.

The data must be granular so it tells the specific energy-saving story, it must be fresh so that we fit into established schedules, and it must be finance-grade so that finance teams can see the energy-money tradeoff in an apples-to-apples way.”

Sometimes you just want to reach out and give your user a digital hug. This is one of those cases. Such a clear statement on how the right sustainability data fits into the needs of the business, in a very normal manner. No more data silos!

The Bottom Line

Here’s the final shopping list of requirements from the data manager:

Accurate Data
Audit-Ready Data
Frequent & Granular Data
Business-Ready Data
Data Management, Not Just Data

Is there an industry that does not have these requirements? We heard it first in real estate, which has thin margins and rising energy and water expense. And real estate is a long-lived asset, creating a long-lived exposure to the rising costs of climate change. So while it is not surprising that a data manager from the real estate industry is leading the way, we’ll argue that every sector faces these same challenges.