In an interview, Martin Brühl, chief investment officer and member of the management board at Union Investment Real Estate, a Hamburg-based investor, was asked how he would like to see the valuation profession evolve over the next few years. “I would like to see a continued focus on the human element of valuations,” says Brühl. “While technology and access to new data is certainly helping to enhance valuations, I am concerned about too much automation, report-writing generated through algorithms without necessarily reflecting the complexity and uniqueness of real property assets.” He goes on to say that skill and judgment should be aided, not replaced by, tools and technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms. “After all, valuations are hypothetical prices being paid in a transaction between two entities, two human beings, and to anticipate what the price would have been if that transaction had occurred on the valuation date is something which I don’t see machines doing."