Real Estate Services

Combining our interdisciplinary knowledge, deep transactional experience, technological expertise, business insight and creative vision, dbForesites can guide your team through the Site Selection process to discover your ideal development site(s). We use robust data collection, proprietary analytics, and leverage a large global network of professionals to identify and evaluate potential sites, with particular expertise piercing through the veil of pollution present (or potentially present) on brownfields and other previously developed real property.

dbForesites specializes in Reverse Site Selection, which begins with a specific site and works backwards to evaluate its development/transfer risks, assess its productive potential, analyze its full spectrum of end use options, and find best market fit. By reverse engineering the site selection process dbForesites can more ably assess realistic redevelopment pathways for a given brownfield, abandoned mine, power plant, chemical complex, industrial facility, port property, military base, orphan site, Superfund site, or other exotic real estate assets by first considering the cost, complexity and practicality of returning the site to productive use or offering a sale/lease. Once the site-specific conditions are clearly understood, it becomes possible to objectify a site's highest and best use(s) (or combination of uses) and therefore much easier to consider its market potential, match it to redevelopment strategies as well as target businesses/sectors; or to consider interim strategies to upgrade site conditions, work down risk, improve its competitiveness, or otherwise enhance its marketability to end users.

Many of the service categories below are performed in furtherance of a reverse site selection philosophy by beginning with the end in mind, but starting with the as-is, where-is condition of the asset.

Desktop review to provide an initial property/project screening and review raw data already publicly available and/or provided by the client. This checklist assessment can quickly spot issues and opportunities and is deliverable in a simple report and/or working session with bespoke insights identifying strengths, weakness, opportunities, threats and recommending potential next actions.

Comprehensive analysis of all primary materials and plans related to the subject property/project and data pulled from public and/or third-party sources to assess individual site conditions. The result is a synoptic deliverable assessing each property/project from multiple analytic vectors to consider end use options, development alternatives, orient strategic action, or develop deeper analysis, typically produced following a series of iterative working sessions.

Data rich and comprehensive desktop review and summary evaluation of an individual market, geography or locality utilizing economic data, commercial research, location analysis, demographic information and more.

Robust market assessment of local or regional areas integrating economic & commercial research, location analysis, comparative analysis, historic research, and demographic analysis in order to build objective insight and decision-making intelligence. When appropriate, dbForesites can engage directly to develop custom research, conduct first-person interviews, and explore the subject area confidentially or even clandestinely. We specialize in penetrating the pomp & circumstance of official visits to gather unvarnished baseline intelligence within a community to complement other ongoing research or augment decision-making with truly independent and unfiltered information.

Focused ESG analysis considering past, current and future environmental risks and liabilities of specific real estate assets via comprehensive review of all existing reports and data, recommending additional environmental testing, data gather or investigation when supplemental information is needed or data gaps exist. Once a full framework of real, perceived, and potential adverse environmental impacts is developed, we can evaluate potential costs to remediate/redevelop sites under a range of scenarios, from worst case to best case and/or short term to long term.

Specialized ESG assessment of environmental policies and real estate assets, including specific positives, negatives, values, risks, costs, liabilities and obligations of your operations, or the operations of others, to understand adverse environmental impacts in quantitative and qualitative terms. Once a comprehensive framework is developed, we focus on scoping the range of risks and opportunities per site/operation including potential remediation obligations, natural resource damages and negative carry costs on the one hand, and potential sale/divestment, redevelopment, and alternative strategies such as donation, conservation and eco-credits on the other. 

From there, we can evaluate potential scenarios to find the best overall strategy for each asset, whether divestment, donation, internal repositioning, pre-development, risk-transfer, taking a custom and/or confidential RFP/RFQ to market, or continued internal risk management and/or interim use. In cases of exit where environmental liabilities are extreme, dbForesites can explore and facilitate numerous pre-sale tactical efforts to minimize negative environmental liability going forward, including liability for known and unknown adverse environmental conditions, such as environmental insurance, risk transfer mechanisms, and cost recovery actions, as well as seeking cooperation agreements, renegotiating government orders/agreements, and other negotiations.

Desktop review of relevant environmental, real estate, economic, regional, local, political, development risks, availability risk mitigation strategies, other factors impacting the viability of various divestment and development options for real estate assets. This checklist review will summarily evaluate the full spectrum of potential end uses for the site(s), including residential, commercial, industrial, mixed-use, conservation and alternative uses, including clean energy and eco-credits, and balance their viability against potential locally unwanted land uses and/or community opposition to provide you with objective and independent guidance going forward.

Focused research and robust analysis to identify, assess, and rank the relative advantages and disadvantages of various development or divestment options for specific real estate assets with special consideration given to past, current and future environmental risks and liabilities. This wide-angle and dynamic process can consider the impacts of marginal changes to economic, financial, legal, transactional, community and ESG variables respective to each divestment/development option in order to produce either specific recommendations or build a range of scenarios over short, medium and long term time horizons, typically produced following a series of iterative working sessions.

With a comprehensive framework in hand to evaluate the full spectrum of potential end uses for the site(s), including residential, commercial and industrial uses as well as conservation and alternative uses, such as clean energy and eco-credits, dbForesites can empower you with the caliber of objective insight, independent guidance, and decision-support demanded by even Earth’s most difficult sites. 

With decades of experience working for and on behalf of some of the largest organizations in the world, dbForesites understands how investors, real estate developers and site selectors think. Leverage our unique, first-hand perspective to test your ability to appeal to the types of decision-makers deploying trillions of dollars of capital investment in today’s ever-evolving economy.

We come to you, tour your community, evaluate your site(s) and take stock as any site selector might, often bringing actual investors and real estate developers along. dbForesites’s ground up approach and multidisciplinary expertise closely simulate real world ‘show & tell’ opportunities and are designed as real-time, live fire working sessions. We ask you hard questions and give you direct feedback to better inform your ability to impress a real investor or real estate developer. Your team will take away tips and insights it can use to prepare for the opportunity to meet with the next industry leader, investor, developer and/or site selector that visits and forge lasting first, second and third impressions that lead to new opportunities.

Leveraging a vast global network of connections in government, business, real estate, development, economic development, politics, finance, law and site selection nearly 100,000 strong, dbForesites can help make a market of any real estate site/project no matter how unique, exotic or toxic. We can work with you to create a custom RFP/RFQ for your site/asset that communicates the essential details of your opportunity and distribute it to appropriate target audiences. When appropriate we can assist with active marketing and interest generation as well as making qualitative evaluations of respondents and their responses. 

This can include making confidential or dark markets, where information and data are tightly controlled and confidentially can be maintained. dbForesites can also target specific parties or make limited markets to pre-qualify potential bidders, buyers or service providers. In circumstances where discretion is advised, dbForesites can also assist with quantifying and qualifying potential interest prior to any information exchange or official due diligence to minimize counter-party risks and preserve your discretion.