Curated daily by our industry experts. Stay informed on how tech is shaping the real estate industry with these important headlines.
TechCrunch
Index Ventures has closed a trio of new funds: a $900 million early-stage fund, a $2 billion growth-stage fund and a previously announced $200 million seed-stage fund. The close gives Index $3 billion in new capital, its largest tranche yet, to deploy into emerging startups and existing portfolio companies, which include the likes of Plaid, Deliveroo and Revolut, which was just valued at $33 billion….
VentureBeat
Executives have to prioritize whether to experiment with cutting-edge technologies or wait to see results from other implementations first, Airbnb chief technology officer Vanja Josifovski said in a conversation with VentureBeat founder and CEO Matt Marshall at VentureBeat’s Transform 2021 virtual conference. Most enterprises — even large ones — have constrained resources, so they have to decide which technologies to invest in and which to wait out….
Crunchbase News
Funding to venture-backed proptech companies has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, according to Crunchbase data, with construction tech and property management startups leading the way. VC-backed real estate companies have raised $10.6 billion so far this year, up from the $8.3 billion that was raised during the same period last year, and higher than any year in that period in the past decade.
Bloomberg
It was hard enough to build apartments in high-cost cities like San Francisco before the pandemic triggered an exodus from urban neighborhoods, and now the economics are even tougher. But that’s giving smaller cities a chance to catch up to the rental boom that previously lifted other non-coastal metros like Austin and Denver. For builders, it’s a riskier calculation.
PlaceTech
Having announced a strategic partnership with Fifth Wall earlier this year after investing $85m in four of the VC firm’s funds, Ivanhoé Cambridge is a company determined to grasp the digital future of real estate. But for François Lacoursière, the company’s senior vice president of innovation, it’s not specifically a question of tech. “We shouldn’t be obsessed with tech,” he says. “We should be obsessed with understanding our stakeholder needs and how they evolve. Then the tech will follow.”
PlaceTech
The modular housing company is to build the UK’s largest low-rise modular housing development – a 622-home scheme in Beeston, Nottingham. Health and beauty retailer Boots selected ilke Homes to unlock a 43-acre site close to its UK headquarters, which has been allocated for residential development since 2014.
Business Wire
BERLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Wunderflats, the leading platform for temporary furnished housing in Germany, announces a $21 million growth funding round to further pursue their vision to be Europe’s most customer-centric housing company where you can simply rent homes online.
Business Wire
RICHARDSON, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–RealPage, Inc., a leading global provider of software and data analytics to the real estate industry, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire G5 Search Marketing, Inc. (“G5”), a leading pure-play provider of digital marketing, advertising and analytics solutions to the real estate sector. RealPage plans to combine G5’s industry-leading solutions with its end-to-end real estate platform, significantly accelerating RealPage’s v…
Bisnow
Lateral, which is run by brothers Rob and Nick Beacroft and former CLS director Robert Crawley, is fitting out an office building in London and a life sciences building in Oxford to “category A+” standard. That designation means space is fully equipped with both furniture and mechanical and engineering features, and it is ready for a tenant to move in almost immediately….
The Wall Street Journal
Do not confuse the shape of a fashionable residential tower with the artistic line drawn by an architect. It is the line of truce after a battle. A developer fights to expand his territory, his holy volume of rentable space, and the architect pushes back, trying to carve and sculpt that volume, and to make it beautiful. The developer wins, of course, giving us the box with an all-glass skin that is the industry standard of high-rise housing.
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