From the Studio
Buyers already discount tech companies for outdated infrastructure. The same logic is starting to show up in real estate — and the data on smart buildings shows exactly why.
By Ronny Esquenazi, Principal at Gridspec Lighting
In company transactions, "technical debt" is a term buyers use without apology. During due diligence, they tally up every system that was never properly built, specified, or maintained, and they turn that list into a number. Deloitte's 2026 technology study estimates technical debt now accounts for 21–40% of an organization's IT spending, and Forrester projects that 75% of technology decision-makers are currently carrying moderate to severe technical debt. Known debt becomes a line item in the budget. Unknown debt becomes a discount on the purchase price — or a reason to walk.
Real estate is starting to get priced the same way.
A property isn't just square footage and a roof anymore. It's a stack: electrical capacity, structured cabling, lighting controls, security and access systems, HVAC automation, connectivity. When that stack was installed cheaply, piecemeal, or by whoever was fastest rather than whoever was right, it doesn't fail loudly on day one. It fails quietly, for years, as a building that costs more to retrofit, leases slower, and commands less rent than a comparable property next door. A buyer doing real diligence sees that gap the same way a tech acquirer sees an unpatched codebase: as a bill someone is going to have to pay, with their name on it if they don't negotiate it into the price first.
This isn't theoretical. An MIT Center for Real Estate analysis of more than 650 buildings in New York found that "smart" properties — buildings combining connected, automated, and efficient systems — commanded a 37% premium in effective rents and a 44% premium in transaction prices over comparable buildings without that infrastructure. That study has real limits worth naming: it covers one market, bundles "smart," "connected," and "green" together, and doesn't fully control for building vintage. But a 37–44% spread is not noise, and it points the same direction every other data point in this space points.
On the leasing side, CBRE's occupier surveys show the same shift in real time. In 2018, only 16% of office occupiers in EMEA said a building's technology mattered to their leasing decision. By the next survey cycle, that had nearly doubled to 30%. More recently, CBRE found 53% of companies are willing to pay a premium specifically for smart systems that monitor and adjust energy use, and in its 2025 Americas Office Occupier Sentiment Survey, 43% of tenants said sustainable building features actively influence their rent negotiations, with EV charging (40%) and indoor air quality (37%) close behind. Each of those is a line item a tenant now negotiates on — and a building without it negotiates from a weaker position, every time.
Nobody needs to use that exact phrase at the closing table for the effect to be real. A commercial buyer who has to budget for a full low-voltage retrofit prices that into their offer. A tenant comparing two otherwise-identical spaces leases the one that doesn't need an infrastructure upgrade before move-in. A residential buyer's contractor flags outdated wiring and controls during inspection, and that becomes a negotiating line exactly like a cracked foundation would. The infrastructure doesn't have to be broken to cost you money. It just has to be behind.
This is the argument for treating lighting and low-voltage infrastructure as specification, not decoration — planned alongside the architecture, not bolted on after a buyer's inspector finds the gap. It's also why we work alongside Daisy on the low-voltage side of projects: structured cabling, networking, AV and automation, and security aren't separate from a lighting plan done right, they're the rest of the same system. A property that's properly specified from the start doesn't carry the debt. It carries the premium.
— Ronny Esquenazi, Principal, Gridspec Lighting
Sources: Deloitte 2026 Technology Study; Forrester technology debt projections; MIT Center for Real Estate, "The Incremental Value of Smart Buildings Upon Effective Rents and Transaction Prices" (A. Hano); CBRE EMEA Occupier Survey; CBRE 2025 Americas Office Occupier Sentiment Survey.
