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Cesium Makes Commercial Real Estate Analysis More Accessible for JLL Brokers

With ever-more accessible datasets, the real estate industry is undergoing a digital transformation, and Cesium is at the heart of it. Take JLL, one of the world's largest commercial real estate firms. They're bringing the latest in technology—everything from IoT sensors to kiosks for scheduling meetings—to help their clients find and manage properties more efficiently.

Blackbird, JLL's visualization platform built on Cesium, is used by JLL brokers to explore properties with clients. Covering cities across North America, Blackbird accelerates and streamlines commercial real estate market analysis, making it easier for clients to take virtual market tours.

Colored 3D buildings in New York City

JLL's clients find commercial properties that meet their particular needs with a 3D app built on Cesium.

“The application is truly powered by Cesium—it was never limited by it.”

Daniel Fenton

Senior Director for Core Products, JLL Technologies

Blackbird is more than just a map of available properties: in a single view the application fuses multiple datasets relevant to clients, including 3D buildings, workforce demographics information, tax incentives data, and location of transit stops. Clients can even view planned structures before they've been built and with the time slider can see changes to the area over time.

Brokers can also show custom-built 3D building models, which include property details, together with surrounding the structures provided by Cesium OSM Buildings. Thanks to 3D Tiles, it all streams smoothly, for even the largest regional markets.

3D buildings in Manhattan colored by walk time to subway

Brokers can filter properties by characteristics important to clients, such as distance to public transit.

Daniel Fenton, Senior Director for Core Products at JLL Technologies, says his team chose Cesium because of its 3D capability, flexibility, and interoperability, which enabled them to build the application they needed quickly. He said of Blackbird, "The application is truly powered by Cesium—it was never limited by it."

To see how quickly you can enhance your work with large-scale 3D visualization, sign up for a Cesium ion account.