What is a Stacking Plan in Real Estate
In this post, I want to share about the Stacking Plan visualization commonly used in the real estate domain.
Before I talk about the visualization, I’d like to share some background and context on why this chart is useful. I will also talk about who are the stakeholders that use it to make business decisions.
Asset Management Context
In real estate, properties are managed for property owners by asset management companies, these companies then list the available units for lease and work with real estate brokers/agents to find renters for these units. The two stakeholders who will be interested in the information shown in a stacking plan are the:
- Property Owners — the asset owner, who can be a company or individual
- Real Estate Brokers — real estate brokers/agents who are interested in securing a rental for their client. The stacking plan is likely available to the landlord agent and not the tenant agent due to the data sensitivity.
Data important to property owners
Property owners are interested in utilization of property, such as what is the percentage of leasable floor area that is leased out at any time. Any unleased floor area is wasted as it is not generating any rental. When a property is managed on behalf of an owner, typically reports will need to be provided to the owner to explain such metrics to the asset owners as part of their property’s performance. The stacking plan is likely a supplementary visual aid that could be included to further show the current performance of the property.
Property owners are interested in:
- Current Leases and their expiration (the further out in the future, the better)
- Low Availability/Vacancy Rate, High Occupancy Rate
Data important to Landlord Brokers
They want to know who is leasing which available units, when their leases are ending (target renewal dates) and what the current unit prices are (i.e. USD/sqft).
- Available area for lease (availabilities)
- Current Estimated rental rates
- Expiration Dates of Leases
The Stacking Plan Visualization
Main Area Channels
- Vertical Position — Floor of the building, the higher up vertically, the higher the floor
- Horizontal Position — In order of a property (usually by its unit number)
- Horizontal Size — The floor area (in percentage of total floor area)
- Color — Rental Expiry Duration — the longer the expiration date the greener, and the shortest are red, however other data fields can be allocated to the color for different types of data representation
Additional Peripheral Information
- The renter’s name — listed on the unit on the stacking plan that represents the renter’s unit.
- The rental expiry date, rental size — also listed on the unit on the stacking plan
- The total floor’s size — listed on the side for each floor
- The occupancy % (utilization) — listed on the side for each floor
- The rental rate (not shown in the example above)
Visualization Reading
At a glance, a property owner can view the health of his/her property by seeing both the occupancy rate, as well as the quality of the tenants (the quality of a tenant is subjective and dependent on the property owner’s preferences). This allows him to decide if the management firm is performing well and deserving of their fee.
And as for landlord brokers/agents, they know which clients are ‘at risk’ and can reach out to offer them a good deal for a renewal or look for potential new tenants who can help to improve the overall rental yield of the property.
Closing thoughts
When I first learnt about the Stacking Plan, its dense information presentation was interesting to me. The amount of information presented at a glance, and in a dense yet easily-accessible way, makes this visualization one that is easy to understand and analyze.
If you felt that this was interesting too, let me know in the comments below, or drop me a clap👏🏻!
Other Examples of Stacking Plans
This article was written for the CS5346 Information Visualization module taught by Professor Bimlesh Wadhwa as part of my Masters in Artificial Intelligence conducted by the National University of Singapore.
References
- Article Photo by Tobias Reich on Unsplash
- [1]: Retrieved from https://cartifact.com/stacking-plans on 30th Jan 2020.
- [2]: Retrieved from https://www.behance.net/gallery/20874533/Real-Estate-Stacking-Plans on 30th Jan 2020.
- [3]: Retrieved from https://ascendix.com/blog/commercial-real-estate-stacking-plan-in-xre/ on 30th Jan 2020.
