Agree Realty drives scalability & efficiency with MRI Software and Newmark RF

Agree Realty (NYSE: ADC) is a publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust that’s rethinking retail by acquiring and developing properties net leased to industry-leading, omnichannel retail tenants. Based in Royal Oak, Michigan, the company is an $11+ billion industry leader with a portfolio of over 2,500 properties in all 50 states across the U.S. comprising approximately 52 million sq. ft. of gross leasable area. 

Business Challenge

In 2022, Agree Realty initially planned to acquire $1.1–1.3B of high-quality retail net lease assets. The company had the right plan to achieve its goal, surpassing its initial expectations and ultimately acquiring approximately $1.6B. But it also knew its technology stack required more scalability, automation, and workflows to support this growth.  

Never one to shy away from technology challenges, Agree began a nine-month transformational project to upgrade its operating platform. The company replaced its existing general ledger system and added functionality to address immediate business requirements as well as strengthen its long-term growth capabilities and competitive differentiation. 

Solution

Agree chose to work with MRI Software and Newmark RF to implement MRI Commercial Management, creating one source of truth for data to power accounting and asset management decisions for the company’s retail portfolio. The team developed a solution that streamlined and automated portfolio management activities while connecting all finance and accounting functions, including general ledger, accounts payable, budgeting and forecasting, fixed assets, debt management, recoveries, and more. Agree’s Property Accounting, Lease Administration, Corporate Accounting, Financial Reporting, and Asset Management groups could now share information and collaborate more closely to achieve the company’s growth goals. 

Big goals require big decisions—and great confidence in the data supporting those decisions. With its real estate, leasing, and financial data connected, Agree needed to ensure that it could rely on this data’s accuracy. It also implemented MRI Contract Intelligence, an AI-powered lease abstraction tool that lets teams quickly summarize, validate, and share critical lease and contract details with stakeholders.

Business Impact 

The collaboration between MRI and Newmark RF gave Agree Realty a more effective accounting and asset management solution that supports the company’s growth targets and can scale to meet future expansions. 

• Improved contract automation: Teams can add lease and contract data directly into Agree’s systems without manual processes—and still easily drill down to the source data for full auditability.  

• Simplified entity setup: When Agree buys new entities, the solution significantly reduces the time needed to set up a new entity in the system by copying data points that are the same for each property.

• More efficient multi-tenant editing: When finalizing multi-tenant property deals, Agree can edit billing addresses for all tenants that have same parent company at once instead of updating each tenant separately. 

• Accelerated check processing: The time needed to process physical checks was reduced from 20 minutes to one minute per check—saving nearly three weeks per year. 

• Expedited recovery accruals: With automated recovery accruals calculations, the complex accounting process of creating a journal entry and report was reduced from three weeks to under a minute. 

• Rapid job costing: After moving job costing processes from Excel to the MRI solution, the time needed to create new jobs in the system fell 80%. 

What’s more, the benefits don’t stop with Agree Realty. The insights and functionalities developed during this implementation can be used by other MRI Software clients, enabling more efficiencies and cost savings throughout the commercial real estate industry. 

This project is a game-changer for Agree Realty, marking a major milestone in our journey. Through our teams’ collaboration, we’ve unlocked the MRI platform’s full potential. It stands as a shining example of how effective implementation and teamwork drive exceptional results.

– Larry Kaufman, Chief Information Officer & VP – Continuous Improvement