The blackprint Group launched its Future Real Estate Initiative (FREI) with the first Thought Leader Circle in Frankfurt in July. This network and research initiative, planned until the end of 2027, aims to bring together leading companies, institutions, and innovation players in the construction and real estate industry. The primary goal is to develop robust future scenarios, guard rails, and concrete action systems for an industry undergoing a profound transformation process. Drivers of this change include digitisation, artificial intelligence, new business models, increased regulatory pressure, and elevated economic demands.
The initiative sees itself as a comprehensive development approach that connects different parts of the value chain. Participating partners contribute perspectives from the areas of existing properties, investment, financing, technology, sustainability, operations, planning, law, regulation, research, and institutional practice. Within FREI, blackprint combines its networking and ecosystem work, established since 2017, with the research activities of the blackprint Institute, which was spun off at the beginning of the year.
Comprehensive consideration of the transformation
The background for FREI is the profound change gripping the construction and real estate industry. Phenomena such as artificial intelligence, new technologies, altered business models, the energy transition, ESG regulation, climate adaptation, sustained economic pressure, and the shortage of skilled workers are simultaneously changing value chains, operational processes, financing structures, and organisational forms. FREI focuses on analysing the interactions of these factors to derive desirable future perspectives and well-founded bases for decision-making.
Sarah Schlesinger, CEO and Managing Partner of the blackprint Group, emphasised that the construction and real estate industry will make far-reaching decisions in the coming two to three years, the effects of which will extend beyond the current market cycle. The aim is to jointly determine which positive future scenarios are viable and desirable to create a common framework for orientation for the industry.
Structure and focus of the initiative
The Future Real Estate Initiative integrates blackprint's expertise in network management, research, data competence, and AI into a structured development process. Based on identified “game changers”, impact chains, future questions, and hypotheses are derived. These form the basis for the development and validation of positive future scenarios, which are then translated into guard rails, roadmaps, and concrete action systems. The initiative focuses on six central themes:
- —Future Urban Development
- —Future Construction & Renovation
- —Future Operational Excellence
- —Future Energy Transformation
- —Future Investment & Value
- —Future Leadership & Skills
These themes encompass the essential areas of the constructing and built world, from urban and neighbourhood development to planning, construction, renovation, and operation, as well as energy, financing, and organisation. The theme Future Leadership & Skills serves as an overarching framework for questions of leadership, competencies, and the role of people in transformation processes. The new blackprint Institute assumes scientific, analytical, and methodological responsibility within the initiative, including research architecture, game-changer logic, interview and analysis formats, and the derivation of concrete recommendations for action.
Following the launch in Frankfurt, further interviews, specialist articles, Thought Leader Circles, and validation formats are planned. A first interim publication is expected by the end of 2026. The concluding Future Real Estate Report, which aims to consolidate the findings into a comprehensive picture of the future construction and real estate industry, is scheduled for 2027.
