Curated daily by our industry experts. Stay informed on how tech is shaping the real estate industry with these important headlines.
Bisnow
From January until mid-May, four- and five-star office space represented 49% of gross leasing activity, representing a 3% jump compared to previous years. Lower-quality buildings attracted an even smaller share of new deals than in previous years, according to new data from CoStar Group.
CNN
The United States is experiencing a “reckoning” over race, justice and inequality that has been decades in the making, fintech CEO Ryan Williams told CNN Business. “We’ve been hallucinating as a country for a long time,” said Williams, the 32-year-old African American founder of Cadre, a startup disrupting the real estate industry with the support of elite investors including George Soros, Mark Cuban and Peter Thiel….
Oregon Live
CrowdStreet, a Portland company that funds commercial real estate developments through its website, laid off 24 of its 110 employees Monday. The coronavirus outbreak has thrown the commercial real estate sector into tumult, with most office workers doing their jobs remotely and the broader economy heading sharply downward.
Wall Street Journal
An online plank-holding contest. Walk-and-talk meetings held outdoors via Zoom. A companywide game show based on Netflix’s “Love Is Blind,” capped with a virtual dance party. American companies are experimenting with new ways to replicate the camaraderie that once defined day-to-day life inside an office as a pandemic-induced period of remote work approaches three months—with no clearly-defined end in sight.
The Real Deal
Miguel McKelvey is leaving WeWork, the embattled office-sharing company he helped found in 2010. McKelvey was one of the few remaining executives at WeWork following its failed attempt to go public and bailout by… …
Openbox
The rapidly changing nature of the situation calls for more than simply running a report from an existing system or passing around spreadsheets that may already be out of date before they are received. Thanks to our wealth of experience with business intelligence, data and integration, we’ve been able to answer the call in record time by combining the rapidly deployed Power BI suite with existing tools and systems to turn raw data into actionable information.
AUSTININNO
Swivel has released a new SaaS-based leasing application to help commercial real estate leasing teams keep food on the table and the lights on at the office — and maybe at home. The Austin company released AgileView recently, which Swivel says helps office space landlords and leasing teams “transform traditional leasing processes to digital to ensure leasing velocity during the pandemic.”
Finsmes
Betterview, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a software platform for P&C insurance carriers, raised $7.5m in funding. The round, which brought total capital raised to date to $17m, was led by ManchesterStory with participation from Guidewire Software, Nationwide, EMC Insurance Companies, MaidenRe, Compound, Winklevoss Capital, and Chestnut Street Ventures.
Wall Street Journal
When New York City’s education department ordered teachers to stop using Zoom videoconferencing for classes in April, because of security concerns, Microsoft Corp. MSFT -1.47% seized the moment. A team of 50 Microsoft staffers worked around the clock with administrators and teachers across New York’s school district, the nation’s largest, to convert them to Microsoft Teams, the company’s rival conferencing and collaboration software. Microsoft also gave the district expedited access to features …
CREtech
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