How Brandon Taubman Applies Data Science to Commercial Real Estate Investing

Brandon Taubman has over 15 years of experience combining data science and analytical tactics as a financial engineer across a number of industries and specialties.

With a strong foundation in Wall Street firms such as Barclays Capital and Ernst & Young, Taubman led efforts for scouting and research with the Houston Astros. His contributions helped them achieve their first World Championship in 2017. 

This diverse background has culminated thus far at Stablewood Properties, a commercial real estate investment firm based in Houston, Texas, where Taubman serves as co-founder and chief information officer. Stablewood differentiates itself from others in the market by placing additional emphasis on data science to supplement subject matter expert direction for investment opportunities. This approach is spearheaded by Taubman and implements principles from his other analytics ventures. 

Stablewood Properties Aims to Disrupt Commercial Real Estate Investment

Commercial real estate remains a laggard industry when it comes to apply technology and analytics to decision making processes. This stems, in large part, from a lack of historic data that is prevalent in other sectors such as financial markets. Brandon Taubman helped found Stablewood Properties with the idea to change how business is done. As a private equity firm, they aggregate and process data using proprietary systems and on-staff data scientists. The goal is to make decision making more efficient and fact based rather than drawn out and speculative. 

According to Brandon Taubman, “The understanding of risk around investments is most sincere and best understood in finance and probably least understood in real estate. Taubman finds this data challenge exciting, rather than overwhelming. While data aggregators lack the depth, he has had access to in other industries, commercial real estate is an untapped market prime for innovation. “There’s higher barriers of entry for the competition,” said Taubman. “There’s opportunity for us to figure it out and get a huge head start.”

Creating a Foundation in Real Estate Based on the Baseball Diamond

One of Brandon Taubman’s unique offerings is that he brings a wealth of knowledge in more than commercial real estate. For six years, Taubman worked in various roles for the then-rebuilding Houston Astros, ultimately talking on the role of Assistant General Manager. In this capacity, he helped the team innovate its approach to scouting and talent acquisition by relying heavily on historic player and comparable data to make reduced risk decisions on prospects and trades. 

One barrier to this tactic for commercial real estate is the private, closed-door nature of many of the transactions that occur. To collect data points, time, systems, and resources are needed. Taubman and the team at Stablewood are building their own systems to track and collect this data, anticipating that as the industry begins to evolve and becomes more reliant on SaaS and CRM processes, additional data sets will become available. Taubman explained, “There is a constant tension at Stablewood where we value data, we value technology to a degree, I think more than many firms in the industry, but traditionally, this is an industry where real estate decisions are made largely on intuition.” 

Using Data Science to Drive Commercial Real Estate Investment

Predictive analytics can open doors into risk adverse investment decisions no matter the industry, but the laggard commercial real estate field stands to benefit highly. Brandon Taubman and Stablewood Properties have already begun to put data science to work for them. AI-assisted underwriting helps use existing data and deal terms to hypothetically underwrite every deal on the market, giving them a snapshot of the potential scope and opportunity available. This method, spearheaded by Taubman, can also indicate prospective returns of specific assets, reducing the guesswork and the time needed to assess an investment.

Compared to traditional methods, Stablewood is able to operate at a lightning speed. These techniques, according to Taubman, can be applied to closing, managing, and selling assets with higher growth and return potential in part because decisions are made based on facts, in less time, for less overall money to start with. Taubman himself is hands on, working daily to identify and validate datasets. “As the head of data analytics, I design tools and build models that help us make better investment decisions,” explained Taubman.

This resourcefulness is indicative of Taubman’s belief in the importance of evidence-based decision making. Whether working with existing data sets or building the tools to aggregate the data himself, Brandon Taubman leads commercial real estate investment ventures with facts. “There is no shortage of great ideas, but to make them actionable, you need evidence to support their legitimacy. That requires a combination of qualitative research, hard, data, and subject matter expertise,” shared Taubman. He emphasizes that while facts are critical, they are not the only aspect of the process. Similar to his time at the Houston Astros, where data was combined with the expertise and observations of the scouts seeing players firsthand. Subject matter experts, who have years of experience, should never be overlooked when it comes to the investment process.