Now more than ever, amid the coronavirus crisis, Americans are aware of the tradeoffs between economic growth and social, environmental, and health concerns.  This is not a new paradigm; the latest crisis has simply revealed these tradeoffs in a more conspicuous light.  Much of our economy relies on extracting limited resources, tangible materials like concrete and steel for buildings as well as people’s finite energy and creativity consumed by unfulfilling work.  Real estat ..read more

Industrious, a premium flex office space provider In light of the COVID-19 outbreak, on Thursday, April 9, 2020, the Cornell Baker Program in Real Estate was thrilled to resume its Spring 2020 Distinguished Speaker Series via video conference.  Cornell alumni Jerre Riggs and Andrew Powers joined us for a discussion about coworking and their company, Industrious. Riggs is Director of Real Estate and Powers is a Real Estate Manager at Industrious, a co-working firm that has an impressive track record of innovation and growth.  Riggs earned his Bachelor of Arts in 2002 from Cornell Univ ..read more

On October 18, 2019, the Cornell Real Estate Council welcomed leading investors and operators in real estate technology — or “PropTech” — to the 37th annual Cornell Real Estate Conference.  The esteemed panel provided valuable insights into the exciting world of PropTech and the changing real estate environment in light of the ever-growing pervasiveness of technology in the industry.  Panelists included Brad Greiwe of Fifth Wall Ventures, Andrea Jang of JLL Spark, and Judah Siegal of Brookfield Ventures, and they were joined by moderator Zak Schwarzman of MetaProp. Brad Greiwe is the ..read more

Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google that is working with the city of Toronto in revitalizing 750 acres along the city’s Eastern Waterfront, made headlines this year. Controversy arose when questions surrounding data collection, privacy, and who owns the information collected in public began surfacing on the project, Sidewalk Toronto (Scola, 2018). This caused stakeholders to ask, “how smart is too smart?” While debate continues, more smart city initiatives are being activated, moving towards an integrative platform of complex networks particularly with respect to information and communic ..read more

Issues around cyber security are nothing new for companies in the digital age but considering the recent headlines around the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the Equifax Credit Reporting hack, a new emphasis on how we in commercial real estate think about data protection might be warranted. Data breaches commonly involve the taking of consumer data, trade secrets, and other financial information. The damage to a company’s reputation and potential legal liability (class action lawsuits are a common remedy to harmed consumers) are already significant but the potential for physical damage insid ..read more

Source: http://www.afr.com/content   Big data analysis and data science techniques applied to public and private datasets is nothing new, but recent growth in the quality of information and its use in commercial real estate is. Commercial real estate is a $12 trillion industry and the ability to make better data-driven decisions can save time and money for almost everyone involved.  Nearly every type of commercial real estate professional has been impacted by innovations in data technology at some level. Real estate investors and brokerage professionals are no exception as seen by th ..read more

Blockchain technologies, specifically cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have been making headlines lately as the world begins to utilize them in various transactions. Once stigmatized as a tool to enable money laundering, drug dealing, murder for hire and other illicit “dark web” transactions on sites like Silkroad, these technologies have shed their stigma, gone mainstream and minted some of the world’s newest millionaires. To highlight how far these currencies have come, on December 10th, Bitcoin futures began trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and news recently broke about Goldman Sachs ..read more

The Cornell Tech campus on New York City’s Roosevelt Island is an exceptional example of the world’s potential to lower the carbon footprint of real estate. From concept to delivery, sustainability was at the forefront for the entire design and construction team behind the Cornell Tech campus. Project History In 2008, to address the significant opportunity for the expansion of the high-tech sector in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office launched a competition to develop an applied sciences campus with a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation, where the winning school would be gif ..read more

In 2018, New York City-based asset management firm Elevated Returns completed a tokenized real estate offering for $18 million on the Ethereum blockchain. The asset was the St. Regis Resort in Aspen, Colorado. The high-profile property and the employment of an unusual fundraising method caught the attention of investors, fintech enthusiasts and blockchain communities. Not long after, a new 12-unit development valued at over $30 million was the first in Manhattan to be tokenized. Tokenization on a very broad level is similar to creating shares in a company. However, one of the key benefits of ..read more

The Commercial Real Estate Technology (CRETech) Conference, held in NYC on 13th and 14th October, addressed recent commercial real estate trends, key challenges currently faced in proptech, and technology solutions to make housing affordable. CRETech is the largest event to bring an international community of leading experts in technology innovation in real estate together, including company trade shows and the largest directory of proptech startups defining the future of the industry. The conference speakers presented insightful content and projected notable enthusiasm about being back in pe ..read more