MOBILE INTERNET IS MAKING THE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY MOVE
The Internet and rise of mobile devices is starting to touch all corners of the real estate landscape.
Why? It’s as simple as this: Because it makes our lives easier in the long run.
And while real estate still very much thrives on face-to-face interactions, mobile allows us to take our work with us everywhere we go. For industry professionals that travel from building to meeting room to work site–and there are many that do–mobility is key to professional flexibility.
Companies like View the Space, HighTower, 42 Floors, CompStak,and Field Lens understand the importance of applications, but also see great potential in capitalizing on the mobile web and potentially reaching more than 1.2 billion people.
Read more here.
RETHINKING ENERGY EFFICIENCY IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE
As the implications and consequences of climate change start to hit closer to home, commercial real estate owners and occupiers looking to improve their bottom line while increasing their energy efficiency find themselves in the same position — stuck!
Here are three familiar and accessible areas of the real estate investment market where small but powerful changes can leverage participation into results for both the bottom line and the environment.
CHINA’S OVERSEAS REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT ROSE BY 25% IN 1ST QTR; CHICAGO TAKES TOP SPOT
Investment in residential projects overseas was fueled by major Chinese residential developers looking to “counteract slower economic and price growth at home,” said David Green-Morgan, Global Capital Markets Research Director.
Although commercial investment was flat over the first quarter of the year, Chinese investors still spent over $1 billion on commercial projects outside of the country.
Top cities to attract Chinese money – commercial and residential combined — in the first quarter were Chicago ($464 million), London ($348 million), Sydney ($243 million), Melbourne ($150 million), Los Angeles ($144 million) and San Francisco ($72 million), Jones Lang LaSalle said.
Read more here.
VIEWPOINT: RISE OF FEMALE LEADERS A BOON TO REAL ESTATE BUSINESS
The commercial real estate industry has experienced a fundamental shift in recent years as more women than ever are pursuing career paths within the field that have the potential to lead to a seat in the boardroom.
With an increasing number of women earning a place in the executive suite, the REIT community is starting to see an uptick in female faces in the boardroom–a place where they are still markedly underrepresented. The Commercial Real Estate Diversity Report published earlier this year shows that 62 percent of the 175 REITs in the study had at least one woman director at the time of the report’s publication, which marks a significant improvement from 45 percent in 2012.
Despite these advances, however, gender balance in the boardroom has yet to become an industry norm.
Read more here.
TECH REVOLUTIONS COMES TO THE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE INDUSTRY
A website that helps commercial real estate owners find and evaluate quality contractors.
A site that helps them track interested lessees and potential building occupants.
An IT outsourcer who will manage all a real estate company’s computer needs and put its entire system in the “cloud.”
Each of them is part of a computer and mobile-technology revolution that is rapidly taking hold in the commercial real estate industry, and participants should embrace it with both hands or face dire consequences, experts said last week.
Speakers at the event, “Technology Trends: Working Smarter in Commercial Real Estate,” organized by the commercial real estate group NAIOP at Kean University, said technology-driven inventions have the capacity to make companies more efficient, and improve their bottom line, and companies that don’t harness that power may struggle to compete with those that do.
Senator Bob Corker discusses his plan to unwind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:
Yoel Kranz, a partner with Goodwin Proctor, discusses shareholder activism and the REIT sector with REIT.com:
