How do real estate leaders pick proptech winners? Don’t start with technology, start with business strategy, advised Radiant Property Technologies Managing Director Paul Chen in the first instalment of Yardi’s Proptech Insights webinar. 

The property technology universe, once studded with a handful of stars, is now strewn with countless constellations.

Technologies from artificial intelligence to augmented reality, driverless cars to big data, blockchain to smart buildings, are transforming the real estate value chain. But in a market with what can seem like millions of choices, how do savvy real estate players set their priorities?

This is a big question – one that Yardi’s Bernie Devine posed to Paul in the first of a new online insight series.

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Every single person in Lendlease’s 11,000-strong team has their sights set on net zero emissions by 2025. It’s a huge undertaking – one which will be impossible without the help of technology and data.

This puts Richard Kuppusamy and Helen Lam – two of Lendlease’s digital leaders – in the driver’s seat as they help steer their company towards Mission Zero.

Bernie Devine, Yardi’s Regional Manager, recently caught up with the pair as part of the latest instalment of Yardi’s Proptech Insights series.

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What’s the best way for a real estate company to flex its innovation muscle? Robust evaluation.

That’s the key takeaway straight from two property technology specialists, Cromwell Property Group’s Sean Rowe-Hagans and Yardi Systems’ Bernie Devine.

Bernie, Yardi’s Regional Director, caught up with Sean in the latest instalment of Yardi Proptech Insights. It’s a series that Bernie like to call the “proptech duck dive” because it “gets beneath the surface of property technology”.

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How will transparent data revolutionise real estate?

This was the underlying question for Ben Robinson, CEO of Raffles Quay Asset Management in Singapore, when he sat down with Yardi’s Bernie Devine recently for the latest instalment of Yardi Proptech Insights.

Ben oversees the largest integrated mixed-use development at Singapore’s Marina Bay. In real estate terms, One Raffles Quay and Marina Bay Financial Centre constitute 4.5 million square feet of prime Grade A office and 179,000 square feet retail space. In human terms, the precinct is usually the workplace of 26,000 people.

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The real estate sector is busy repositioning portfolios, pivoting into new sectors and pouring money into proptech. But will it be enough to meet the elevated demands of building customers in the post-pandemic world?

This was the big question behind Bernie Devine’s latest Yardi Proptech Insights webinar.

In the fifth instalment of the series for 2021, Yardi’s Vice President Brian Sutherland joined Bernie, Yardi’s Regional Director, for a chat.

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In less than two years, the value equation in commercial real estate has evolved. Four walls and functioning systems were once enough for tenants to sign long leases. Now experience is everything.

Bricks-and-mortar is only as valuable as the experience it can deliver. This was one of the clear takeaways from the latest Yardi Proptech Insights webinar, hosted by Yardi’s Regional Director Bernie Devine. In this first instalment for 2022, Bernie sat down with Chris Brooke for a chat.

What are the biggest, boldest questions that everyone in real estate needs to answer?

Last year, guests on Yardi’s Proptech Insights program shared their secrets to navigating the complex proptech ecosystem. Bernie Devine, Yardi’s Senior Regional Director, asked a lot of questions – and our guests offered many insightful answers.

But to kick off 2022, Bernie and guest Adam Beck turned the tables by posing four provocative questions for the region’s property leaders to ponder over the year ahead.

Should we be snapping up land in the metaverse? Splashing out on virtual real estate? Should we jump onto the next big thing for fear of missing out? Or should the real estate sector be more sceptical about technology?

These were some of the questions Yardi’s Bernie Devine and JLL’s Jordan Kostelac explored in the latest instalment of the Yardi Proptech Insights series. As JLL’s director for proptech in the Asia Pacific, Jordan is focused on turning one of the world’s biggest real estate agencies into a technology company that specialises in real estate.

Three things are holding back the world’s commercial real estate sector, says Kylie Davis, president of Proptech Association Australia.

“Our commitment to Excel spreadsheets and filing cabinets and whiteboards,” are roadblocks to a real estate revolution. And this “very inefficient and expensive” commitment is holding real estate companies back from squeezing more value from assets and creating better experiences for customers.

Kylie, a serial entrepreneur and futurist who advises several proptech start-ups, recently sat down with Yardi’s Senior Regional Director Bernie Devine for a chat.

After Jack Fitzgerald stumbled across the term ‘proptech’ he spent a sleepless night burning the midnight oil or, more accurately, draining the battery on his phone. The technology that had transformed other sectors of the economy was coming for real estate.

Jack, Hitachi’s Director of Smart Cities and Real Estate Tech, recently sat down with Bernie Devine for the latest instalment of the Yardi Proptech Insights series – and his insights were illuminating.

If proptech is about solving business problems, then one real estate’s biggest problems is its carbon footprint. Real estate has a responsibility to decarbonise, as around 40% of the world’s emissions come from buildings.

Many of the world’s largest real estate companies have set net zero targets; S&P Global puts the figure at 43%. More than a fifth of the world’s 2,000 biggest publicly traded firms – all of them corporate occupiers – have also set net zero targets and are scrutinising their real estate footprints. Su Lin Wee, PGIM Real Estate’s Head of Asset Management for Southeast Asia, recently joined host Bernie to share an investor’s perspective on the power of proptech to transform net zero aspiration into action.

Electric vehicles are heading towards real estate at speed and scale. With up to 300 million EVs on the roads by 2030, new business models are beginning to emerge. But for all the opportunities, there are also plenty of obstacles. Yardi’s Bernie Devine and ESR’s Dr. Michael De Jong-Douglas recently sat down to explore the possibilities.

The International Energy Agency predicts that the number of electric vehicles on the roads – cars, vans, trucks, and buses – could reach 300 million by 2030. Last year electric car sales took off, surpassing the 6.6 million mark despite supply chain bottlenecks and the ongoing challenges of Covid-19. This took the total number of electric cars on the road to 16.5 million.

Kevin, Yardi’s Vice President, interfaces with some of the world’s largest real estate companies and has observed a shift in the proptech conversation in 2023.

The latest Metaprop Global PropTech Confidence Index, which has been a barometer of health for the burgeoning proptech industry since 2016, recorded its lowest investor confidence score to date. Confidence plummeted to 5.8 out of 10, down from its all time high of 9.3 just six months prior. While a “handful” of proptech companies are receiving “big cheques” a “long, long tail” is the recipient of far smaller returns, Kevin noted. Expect that long tail get much shorter, Kevin predicted, as the screws of regulation tighten over the next two or three years.

So, what can we expect in 2023?

Tokenisation can provide liquidity to illiquid assets – and one recent estimate suggests tokenising just 0.5% of the total global property market between now and 2026 would create a $1.4 trillion market.

Alice Chen, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at InvestaX, was a real estate lawyer for many years, dealing with complex transactions “with a lot of intermediaries, a lot of paperwork and a lack of trust”.

One of the biggest hurdles to real estate tokenisation is the stamp duty or transfer tax applied each time the asset changes hands. But Alice can clearly see a future of instantaneous settlement and no intermediaries.

So, how long will tokenisation take to transform real estate?

Picture the potential of a “big flat block of land” that attracts more than five million visitors each year. As Region Group, Australia’s largest landlord of convenience-based neighbourhood malls, reimagines retail, new business opportunities abound. But those opportunities also introduce new levels of complexity.

Call it the village square or high street, the agora or piazza – every neighbourhood has a place where people gather to connect with their community and to buy their groceries. In Australia, around 1,200 convenience-based neighbourhood malls are the contemporary interpretation of the ancient village square. Australia’s largest landlord, with a $4.4 billion portfolio of 100-plus malls, is Region Group.

Asia’s real estate leaders can expect an “enormous explosion” in the use of artificial intelligence in the next few years, says Link REIT’s Chair & Independent Non-Executive Director, Nicholas Allen.

Nick discussed the AI juggernaut, among other property technology trends, with Yardi’s Senior Regional Director Bernie Devine during the latest instalment of Yardi Proptech Insights. McKinsey hailed 2023 as “AI’s breakout year” and predicted that generative AI could add s US$4.4 trillion to the global economy each year. Goldman Sachs has estimated that 300 million full-time jobs could be transformed.