Featured by The Real Deal. 

Big data — the collection of large and complex data sets — can transform building construction and management, investment, leasing and even government policy, according to scholars and experts on sustainable real estate.

Volume, velocity, variety and veracity define big data, but its biggest selling point is perhaps speed, Jed Kolko, chief economist at residential real estate site Trulia, told a packed audience at the third annual conference on sustainable real estate hosted by New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate.

Big data provides statistics in a matter of seconds or minutes, not the weeks or even months it takes to receive a report such as Standard & Poor’s Case–Shiller Home Price Indices, Kolko said in his keynote speech at the daylong session.