SERvices
Strategic Consulting
Real estate questions are rarely just about real estate. They are business decisions that shape cost, strategy, talent, operations, culture, and growth.
We help you get to the real business problem behind the ask — the part others miss. In Australia's current environment, where economic and real estate conditions are fluctuating and uncertainty exists, we are helping our public, private and not for profit sector clients to reshape how they think about their built assets, to support considered and fully defensible decision making.
We bring unbiased, evidence-based insight that turns uncertainty into confident decisions. And we stay beside you through execution, fully accountable for making the plan work in the real world. Our market knowledge of Australian conditions, across all real estate asset sectors, means our advice is grounded in local reality, not imported assumptions.
What Sets Us Apart
Investment Decisions You Can Stand Behind
We evaluate financial impacts and the implications of different investment choices, bringing together commercial insight, financial modelling, and business/economic case development to support confident decision-making.
Capital Prioritisation, Done Properly
We help you navigate opportunities, understand risk, and prioritise investments across assets, portfolios, and developments. Using market insight, financial analysis, and scenario modelling, we help you maximise long-term value and portfolio performance.
Aligning Stakeholders Around a Clear Path Forward
We ground leaders in the underlying problem and business objectives, then evaluate portfolio, workplace, asset, development, and commercial options. Through scenario development and structured engagement, we guide cross-functional decision-making toward real estate solutions that maximise business value.
Your Portfolio Built Around Your Business
We help you determine where to operate, how much space to hold, and what network to build as talent, costs, and business needs shift. Decisions are backed by data, financial analysis, market insight, and commercial judgement — not default real estate assumptions.
Workplaces That Work for Your People
We define and deliver workplace strategies that align employee experience with business goals, bringing together workforce data, change enablement, and emerging thinking on AI's impact on how and where work gets done in Australia.
Sustainability That Goes Beyond Compliance
We develop practical sustainability strategies that balance business objectives, stakeholder expectations, and Australia's regulatory requirements — including NABERS, NCC energy provisions, and emerging mandatory climate disclosure obligations.
Preparing for the AI Inflection Point
We bring a forward-looking perspective on macroeconomic forces, market dynamics, and industry trends to help you evaluate how AI may transform how work gets done. Through workshops and scenario planning, we translate this into implications for your workforce, workplace, and portfolio — covering future talent needs, space requirements, and the capital strategies required to realise them.
Services
Commercial and Financial Strategy
The right capital, structured for better decisions
Real estate decisions are only as strong as the commercial and financial strategy behind them. We help clients evaluate opportunities, structure deals, and build the financial case for action — bringing clarity to decisions where risk, return, and timing all matter.
Across Australia, we work with public, private, and not-for-profit clients — assessing investment opportunities, developing funding and capital strategies, establishing delivery and partnership models, and demonstrating economic and social value.
Key questions we answer:
- How do we make this project commercially viable and investment-ready?
- How do we structure partnerships, incentives, and risk allocation for success?
- How do we attract the right investors, developers, and operators?
- How do we mobilise capital while delivering sustainable economic and community outcomes?
Asset & Development Strategy
The right projects, sized for long-term value
Real estate decisions don't stop at acquisition — they require continuous evaluation, planning, and optimisation. We help clients make informed investment and development decisions that balance risk, cost, and long-term value. In Australia, this includes advising on how to structure, deliver, and fund large-scale development and urban regeneration projects across the country's major city markets and growth corridors.
Whether repositioning existing assets or developing new precincts, we provide the strategic insight and delivery expertise needed to move forward with confidence.
Key questions we answer:
- What is the appropriate mix of land uses that aligns with the demand/supply equation and maximises viability and returns?
- How do I add value in a risk-adjusted way to my asset or portfolio?
- How do I optimise the feasibility of my development project or precinct and manage risk?
- How can I structure the delivery of my project and leverage commercial partnering and funding opportunities?
- What are the preferred planning pathways and development strategies to bring my project to life?
Portfolio & Location Strategy
The right locations, with the right talent
Choosing the right locations across Australia unlocks growth, reduces costs, and improves access to talent. We align real estate decisions with business strategy so every location and property asset works harder for your organisation — drawing on workforce insights, market intelligence, and financial analysis to bring clarity to decisions across your entire footprint.
Key questions we answer:
- How much space do we need today, and how much will we need in the future?
- Which locations best support our talent, business, and growth objectives?
- What is the right portfolio footprint to balance performance, resilience, and efficiency — and where should we grow, consolidate, or exit?
- What is the right total occupancy cost, and how do we compare to the market?
- When capital is constrained, how do we make the correct, risk considered capital allocation and prioritisation decisions for our portfolio?
Workplace & Transformation Strategy
The right workplaces, used the right way
The workplace is more than a place — it is a strategic tool for shaping employee experience, enabling new ways of working, and supporting business success. We help Australian organisations align workplace, culture, and operations to create environments where people thrive, performance improves, and transformation endures.
Key questions we answer:
- How much space do we really need if the way we work keeps changing?
- How can we create a workplace experience that supports attraction and retention of talent in a competitive Australian labour market?
- What future ways of working will best support our business, culture, and workforce?
- How do we align workplace investments with changing employee expectations and business priorities?
Sustainability Strategy
The right strategies, built for long-term resilience and value
Sustainability is increasingly influencing real estate value, operational performance, risk management, and investment decisions. With mandatory climate-related financial disclosure now in force under the Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards, the Safeguard Mechanism driving emissions reduction across large facilities, and NABERS and Green Star ratings increasingly built into investor and tenant expectations, organisations need practical sustainability strategies that deliver measurable business outcomes. We help clients develop and implement sustainability strategies that improve asset and portfolio performance, support decarbonization and net zero goals, manage climate-related risks, strengthen resilience, and enhance stakeholder confidence.
Key questions we answer:
- How can we improve asset and portfolio performance while achieving our sustainability objectives?
- Which sustainability issues matter most to our business, stakeholders, and investment strategy?
- How do we turn our sustainability ambitions into a practical, cost-effective roadmap with measurable results?
- How can we identify, manage, and respond to climate-related risks and opportunities, including NABERS performance and Safeguard Mechanism exposure?
- How do we set targets, establish governance, and effectively measure and communicate performance to stakeholders?
Expertise
One Platform. Every Industry. Every Property Type. No Default Lens.
Our work is industry- and property type-agnostic by design. We don’t start from a fixed point of view – we start from the business problem, then draw on specialist expertise embedded across the global Cushman & Wakefield platform to solve it, wherever that expertise sits.
Our client base is diverse and includes public, private, and not-for-profit entities. We adapt our approach to each client’s unique context, delivering the depth of a specialist and the objectivity of a generalist within the same engagement: portfolio planning, location strategy, workplace design, asset and development strategy, commercial and financial strategy, and sustainability strategy, all informed by real-time data and precedent from across every industry type and property type we touch rather than filtered through the assumptions of any one of them.
Smart Advisors
The built environment is shaped by rising costs, shifting policy, community expectations, and the pressure to do more with less. Clients aren't looking for more noise. They want clarity, honest perspective, and trusted partners.
Our global Strategic Consulting team of 500+ Smart Advisors includes futurists, urban planners, engineers, valuers, development managers, workplace strategists, data scientists, accountants, investment bankers, economists, architects, and financial modellers. In Australia, this team brings deep local knowledge across every major market and asset class.
We start with why. We don't accept the problem statement at face value — we interrogate it, refine it, and apply expertise, context, and experience to create evidence-based insight that turns real challenges into clear decisions.
Insights
Research
AI Impact Scenarios: Australia
MarketBeat • Investment / Capital Markets
Australia Capital Markets Marketbeat Report
Insights • Economy
Artificial Intelligence and the Next Chapter for Australian Commercial Real Estate
Cushman & Wakefield has developed four possible scenarios of how AI may diffuse across the Australian economy over the next decade and modelled the implications of each of these on commercial real estate markets.
Research
AI Impact Barometer: Conviction in a Transforming World
Insights • Workplace
Office Fit Out Costs in Australia 2026
Research • Workplace
What Occupiers Want: Global Survey Results 2025
Research
Reshaping the City Report 2025
Insights • Sustainability / ESG
Climate Risk: Real (E)STATE OF EMERGENCY
Insights • Workplace
Insights • Workplace
5 Essentials for a Healthy Workplace
Insights • Valuation
Strong Demand Dominating the Australian Commercial Property Sector
Frequently Asked Questions
