For years the commercial real estate market remained relatively unchanged when it came to technology, lagging behind the rest of the real estate industry during the Dot Com Boom and the more recent rise of automation and cloud-based technologies. But commercial real estate recovered following the recession and profits began to grow, attracting younger brokers with different needs than their predecessors.
These shifts in the industry have led to a golden age of commercial real estate technology, with entrepreneurs and technology leaders investing capital to push the sector into the 21st Century.
“This growing number of tech start-ups is creating new commercial real estate tools as solutions to the same old way of doing things,” says Duke Long, Managing Partner, PUR VENTURES. Long is a thought leader with a growing online following who believe that disruption is now an industry-wide goal.
With that in mind, Long put together a “Top Ten” List of Commercial Real Estate Technology Companies to watch in 2017.
Here are the Top 5, along with Long’s thoughts on each:
1. VTS: “High quality, visual, actionable data gold”.
2. Opendoor: “Why not just look at how they do the entire transaction like a REIT and follow the same model? Seems simple enough to me.”
3. Cadre: “They raised $68 million from some of the smartest real estate and tech investors in the world and then hired talent so good CEOs of other companies flew in to try and keep them from jumping ship.”
4. Ten-X: “What is the big focus of Ten-X? Engage and develop relationships with brokers, because that’s where the deals and transactions start.”
5. WeWork: “‘WeWork is not a broker. WeWork is not a broker.’ Repeat that to yourself every day. It may help calm your nerves.”
View the full list
here.
Source: “Member Perspective: 10 Commercial Real Estate Technology Companies to Watch in 2017,” Commercial Connections Magazine (Feb. 3, 2017)
