Referring to the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology report for 2004, OSCRE Americas notes that the absence of a uniform language created an inoperability that yielded a loss of nearly $16 billion in capital across the various sectors involved in real estate in the US alone. "Many companies that are OSCRE Americas members such as Sprint, Cisco and Lockheed Martin all have international portfolios and it's often hard for people to talk the same language," Fuhrman says.

The standards will incorporate what OSCRE sees as the two major disciplines of real estate: organizations that use real estate properties as an investment, such as buyers and real estate services firms, and those who use their portfolios as a resource. The goal of the uniform data standards is to create an international framework that eliminates inefficiencies across the board in the real estate industry which encompasses the sectors of architecture, engineering, construction, facility management, appraisal and finance.

"We will look back on this as a key moment in the industry," says OSCRE Americas chairman Ian Cameron. "The Appraisal Institute work will be part of the DNA for how we measure performance and manage value."