August 2026: stage and strength, for commercial
2026-09-04
An availability schedule describes buildings. A demand board describes who wants them. This month the second one started saying more with less.
The order is unchanged, and the markets at the top are still the markets at the top. What changed is that the score behind that order came off the board by default, and two labels took its place: a stage and a strength. This report sets out what they are, why the swap was made, and what it means for pitch material already in circulation.
What a destination board shows now
Each origin market still carries its place in the order for your destination and space type. Alongside it there are now two labels, shown together every time.
The stage is one of four. Ready to buy, Near-purchase, Researching, or Not in market. For commercial work, read it as how close a market is to issuing a requirement rather than to signing one. It turns a place in the order into something you can act on.
The strength is one of three. Strong, Moderate or Emerging. It says how much demand that market carries in its own right, which is what lets one destination's picture be compared honestly against another.
What is no longer shown by default is the score underneath. It still exists and still drives the order, and an administrator can enable it for a specific user. It is just no longer on the board for everyone.
Why the number came off
Two reasons, and the second protects your client relationships.
The first is that a precise figure invites more confidence than any demand estimate has earned. Decimal places read as diligence rather than being evidence of it.
The second is that stages survive recalibration and numbers do not. As coverage widens and measurement improves, every score moves even when the underlying picture has barely shifted. An advisor who put a figure in a pitch six weeks ago is then defending a discrepancy created by an improvement. A stage absorbs that, because the market that was the first call is still the first call.
A stage is relative to the destination you selected
This is the part that matters most in a client meeting.
The stage is a priority within your destination. It is not a claim about the world. The leading markets for a mid-sized office destination read Ready to buy because they are the ones to approach first there, not because they carry the same absolute weight as the leading markets for a much larger one.
The alternative was tested and rejected on evidence. Banding every market against one fixed absolute cut-off produced whole destinations where nothing rose above Researching. True enough, and useless to an advisor, because a landlord opening that board learns nothing about who to approach.
So the within-destination question is answered by the stage, and the across-destination question is answered by the strength. Presenting a stage as though it were absolute is the misreading to avoid, and showing both together is what prevents it.
Ties are shown as ties
The order is tie-inclusive. Two markets genuinely level with each other share a place, and the next one down takes the number that follows the group.
That is deliberate. Forcing a tie apart would invent a distinction the evidence does not support, and in a pitch somebody would then build a recommendation on it. If two origin markets are level, saying so is more useful than manufacturing an order between them.
What this changes in practice
Ready to buy is where the properly prepared material goes. Written in the language of the businesses likely to look, answering the questions they are actually working through: cost of occupancy against their current base, realistic fit-out timelines, what the submarket is genuinely like for a team of their size.
Near-purchase justifies a test, sized so being wrong is affordable.
Researching is a watching brief, and often where the least contested opportunities sit.
Not in market is routinely misread as a weak market. It is not. It is a market outside the funnel entirely, and for some the reason is regulatory rather than commercial. That constraint is surfaced next to the market so a recommendation cannot be made that could not legally be acted on.
For pitch material already in circulation
A pitch that says a market leads your destination is still saying something true. The order has not been discarded and the leading markets did not shuffle because of this change.
A pitch quoting a specific score is a different matter. That number is hidden on most boards now and has almost certainly moved since it was captured. If that is what is in front of you, pull a current board rather than trying to reconcile the two.
Take-up still tells you what already happened
None of this displaces the standard toolkit. Availability, quoting rents, incentives and take-up remain the honest record of what a submarket has done, and they describe supply and outcomes well.
What they cannot describe is demand that has not yet reached your patch, forming inside businesses that have not been briefed on a search. That is the gap these boards exist to fill, which is why the two sit alongside each other rather than competing.
The shape of these reports
This is the first of a monthly cadence, replacing the weekly posts. Monthly fits commercial property better. Occupier demand does not reorganise itself week to week, and a monthly report can carry what genuinely moved.
Occupier, the commercial module from PropScient Data Intelligence, covers demand for space by destination and space type. See what your submarkets look like at propscient.com.
PropScient Data Intelligence produces modelled prospect-demand estimates from aggregated, anonymized signals. Rankings reflect measured search and related intent, not closed transactions, and are not affiliated with or endorsed by any government authority.