Most corporate real estate teams say their space decisions are data-driven. Pressure-test that claim, though, and the infrastructure rarely holds up.

They’re working from utilization studies commissioned quarters ago and dashboards that they don’t open outside a lease renewal cycle. Their plans are stale from the moment they’re made. 

"Most organizations say they want data-driven workplace decisions," says Kanav Dhir, VP of Product & Marketing at VergeSense. "Few actually have the infrastructure to make them. It's not data-driven. It's data-adjacent."

 That gap sits at the center of the portfolio challenge facing CRE leaders today. Hybrid work has decoupled demand from headcount, and real estate remains one of the largest controllable line items on the balance sheet. Most utilization studies and IWMS deployments, though, are still architected for a fixed, pre-pandemic footprint.

 Closing the gap means treating occupancy data as a continuous input to capital planning rather than a periodic audit, and connecting the systems that generate it rather than running them in isolation.

Here are five of the most consequential shifts for portfolio and facilities leaders to watch.

1. Occupancy intelligence becoming the core portfolio metric

For decades, real estate value was underwritten on a single benchmark: cost per square foot. That metric tells you what you hold and what you're paying for it, but it says nothing about asset performance – whether the space is actually meeting demand.

Adding more data points doesn’t solve it. Establishing continuous intelligence does. Kanav defines it as “a live model of how your spaces are performing, how demand is evolving, and what will happen under different scenarios.”

Michael Grant, GM EMEA at Lambent, frames the same idea in forecasting terms: "The more high-quality data you feed into AI models, the more powerful they become for forecasting and scenario planning."

This changes which benchmark matters most. It’s not enough to know how much square footage an organization carries. Now you need to know how that footprint performs against demand week over week. You need confidence that your underlying model is defensible enough to inform updates or events before organizational needs or the market force a decision.

2. Perks don't fix attendance problems

Many organizations try to close the attendance gap with amenities. They spend on catered lunches, social programming, and upgraded common areas.

That approach falls short on its own. "A pizza lunch and a game of ping pong isn't going to fix the friction people feel at work," says Shivaun Ryan, Head of Customer Success at XY Sense. "If I can't find a desk, can't concentrate, or can't easily work with my team, no amount of perks is going to make that experience worthwhile."

Unisys Solution Manager Stacy Harder points to the technology side. Overcoming reluctance to return to the office "starts with eliminating friction, not incentivizing attendance,” she says.

For CRE and workplace strategy teams, this shifts capital allocation away from amenity build-out and toward the operational fundamentals of space standards. Can employees reliably locate a desk, secure a room, and coordinate with their team without friction at every touchpoint?

3. Disconnected systems distort your utilization data

Most real estate and facilities organizations operate a patchwork of booking platforms, sensors, and calendar systems that don't reconcile with one another. They become “ghost spaces” – rooms and desks that read as occupied on a calendar or floor plan but sit empty in practice.

Stacy advises that “this disconnect creates frustration for employees, inefficiencies for facilities teams, and blind spots for leadership." Left unaddressed, the problem compounds. End users stop trusting the reservation system and route around it. These workarounds further degrade the utilization data you rely on.

Addressing the issue rarely requires new capital infrastructure. Wi-Fi density data, badge access logs, and existing calendar integrations are frequently underused sources. They can validate utilization assumptions and surface ghost bookings without new sensor spend.

4. AI shifts focus from reporting the past to shaping the future

Historically, space management has been a reactive discipline. A complaint triggers a reconfiguration, or a lease event triggers a utilization study.

AI is a mechanism that’s breaking that cycle. "Anticipating trends in office usage turns space management from a reactive cost center into a strategic advantage," Michael says.

Microsoft Places product lead Brennan McReynolds describes the practical effect as "the redistribution of time from space analysis to action.” It frees occupancy planning teams to spend less time on data assembly and more time on decisions that require judgment.

For portfolio right-sizing specifically, this changes the negotiating position at the deal table. "Traditionally, a $500K–$1.5M consulting exercise delivers a static report that's stale on delivery," Kanav says. "With AI capabilities, teams can run that analysis internally and walk into a CFO conversation with a live, defensible recommendation instead of a 90-day-old PDF."

5. Occupancy data connects cost control and ESG targets

Space strategy and sustainability reporting are typically run as separate workstreams competing for the same capital budget. That’s becoming an increasingly outdated split, because the same occupancy dataset underwrites both.

"Many [buildings] operate at less than 50% utilization, meaning millions are spent powering, heating, cooling, and cleaning empty space," Shiavun says. "That's not just a cost problem. That's a sustainability problem."

Kanav points to two levers where usage analytics pays off directly: right-sizing a portfolio to eliminate surplus square footage, and feeding utilization data into building management systems to power down underused floors on predictable low-attendance days. Neither requires capital construction, and both produce a defensible figure for both the sustainability report and the CFO's OpEx line.

What this means for CRE strategy going forward

One thread runs through all five of these trends: the organizations getting ahead of hybrid-era portfolio challenges are the ones who treat occupancy data as infrastructure rather than a periodic reporting exercise. That distinction, more than any single sensor or platform, is what separates teams still defending assumptions in the boardroom from teams presenting evidence-backed scenarios.

 Report by: Carolyn Voelkening, Chief Delivery Officer, Appspace

These insights are drawn from The smarter office: Your guide to space management in the hybrid era, a new guide from Appspace. We tapped into perspectives from leaders at Microsoft, Unisys, XY Sense, Lambent, VergeSense, Pointr, and Neat. Read the full guide for their in-depth thoughts on occupancy intelligence, portfolio right-sizing, AI-driven automation, and sustainability planning.