REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY, REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT
Cresa and 4SITE by CORT | February 07, 2023
On February 06, 2023, one of the world's largest occupier-centric commercial real estate firms, Cresa and a provider of a sensor-based workplace occupancy and space utilization platform, 4SITE by CORT, announced their partnership. The two combined will help office occupiers optimize their workplaces.
Many occupiers are looking for ways to reduce underutilized space and real estate spending, as projected by economic headwinds and promoted by the pandemic in a trend. Cresa and 4SITE both acknowledge the importance of cost-effectiveness for businesses, but they also advocate for a more rounded strategy for optimizing workplace environments, one that considers the wants and needs of both employers and workers.
Cresa and 4SITE's partnership is ingrained in a shared commitment to help occupiers make decisions about their workplaces and using data. 4SITE's wireless sensors are the first of their kind, providing an easy-to-implement plug-and-play option that is both cost-effective and reliable for respondents' right to privacy. With 4SITE, you can track occupancy in real-time and get reports and dashboards that break down utilization averages and peaks, compare utilization across different types of spaces, and more.
Additionally, Cresa's Workplace Solutions Team will provide expert analysis as an add-on to the technology, where the experts leverage the data gleaned from 4SITE's sensors to shed light on how office space can be reduced or reorganized more efficiently. As a result, both partners give occupiers a competitive edge, one that reduces costs and improves the employee experience to bring people back to the office.
About 4SITE by CORT
Based in Chantilly, Virginia, 4SITE is wholly owned by CORT Business Services, a Delaware corporation. 4SITE was created to help office occupiers effectively and efficiently understand the use of office space and provide the required data to assess future office space requirements. By tracking how much space is being used, CORT and its clients can adapt to the needs of a rapidly changing workforce. A 4SITE workplace occupancy study that includes accurate and proactive information can help promote a healthy facility by providing the correct information on how space is used.
About Cresa
Founded in 1993, Cresa is a global commercial real estate advisor. The company specializes in delivering fully integrated real estate solutions and represents occupiers. To think beyond space, enhancing and strengthening the quality of life for clients. Its services are provided across industries, including Workplace Solutions, Consulting, Lease Administration, Transaction Management, Project Management, Technology, Investment Banking & Capital Markets and Portfolio Solutions. In collaboration with London-based Knight Frank, Cresa employs 16,000 people across 380 offices in 51 countries to provide customer service.
Read More
REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY,REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT
Lessen | January 17, 2023
Lessen, the leading tech-enabled outsourced property services platform, recently announced the strategic acquisition of facilities maintenance technology leader SMS Assist.
By combining the complementary strengths of both organizations, Lessen will continue to address real estate's pain points, offering its clients a scalable, tech-enabled enterprise solution for residential and commercial services. As a result, the companies will serve around 250,000 residential and commercial properties nationwide, enabling approximately 2.5 million repair and maintenance orders annually, in addition to expanding their property services.
The transaction is completed with stock and cash, with Lessen raising roughly $500 million in combined new debt and equity. SMS Assist stockholders exchanged a portion of SMS stock for Lessen stock, resulting in a combined company valuation of over $2 billion. Debt and equity investors, including Värde Partners, Monroe Capital, and Koch Real Estate Investments, assisted with this transaction. Invitation Homes and American Homes 4 Rent are among the clients who invested in the deal with Lessen.
Following the conclusion of the transaction, Lessen's Jay McKee will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of the newly-merged company. He states, "Lessen recognized early on the opportunity to provide an enterprise-level solution that solved the real estate industry's long-tenured property services pain points." He added, "This deal demonstrates the increasing demand within the underpenetrated, $330 billion addressable North American property services market for a unified, extensible delivery platform that provides transparency, efficiency and data-driven insights for the entire real estate ecosystem including investors, owners, managers and service providers.
(Source – Business Wire)
The new, unified technology platform will allow various service providers—from painters, contractors, and plumbers to electricians and more—to work as one on a national scale, which was previously impossible. The quality of this work will be supervised and inspected by Lessen's in-house project managers. This integrated solution will assist owners in overcoming skilled labor shortages while lessening administrative burden, enhancing project efficiency, and providing real-time project updates.
About Lessen
Lessen is the only end-to-end tech-enabled solution for outsourced real estate property services that delivers consistency, quality, and speed at scale, focusing on single-family and multifamily rental renovations, turns, and maintenance. Through automation and real-time analytics, the firm's technology suite is disrupting and modernizing a project management space that is still reliant on traditional organizational and communication models. The company's professional field project managers provide on-the-ground service, utilizing a network of verified service professionals in over 40 markets across the country, all powered by its proprietary technology platform.
Read More
MARKET OUTLOOK,REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY
ZestyAI | January 13, 2023
ZestyAI, a pioneer in AI-powered solutions for climate and property risk assessments, announced a partnership on January 12, 2023, with a renowned software, data, and analytics company Black Knight, Inc.
The market leader will offer its mortgage, real estate, and capital markets clients access to ZestyAI's property risk analytics platform, Z-PROPERTYTM, in order to deliver fast property-condition reports and risk insights.
ZestyAI's Z-PROPERTY technology extracts insights from aerial and satellite photos for over 150 million residential and commercial properties using computer vision and machine learning. ZestyAI maintains a digital twin of every property in North America that is continuously updated as changes in property condition, upkeep, and renovations affect each property's fluctuating worth and risk.
Black Knight clients benefit significantly from Z-PROPERTY data when assessing property conditions. ZestyAI's technology examines features from each particular property, such as roof condition, to provide property-specific insights that will provide Black Knight's clients with an easy and cost-effective solution to improve their evaluation of property worth and risk throughout the mortgage life cycle.
Julian Grey, Executive Vice President, Mortgage & Capital Markets Product Management at Black Knight Data & Analytics, said, "We're always looking to deliver even more powerful data and insights for our customers, and ZestyAI's property analytics platform immediately stood out." She added, "Investors and creditors will now have instant access to detailed property condition data much earlier in the origination cycle. Offering ZestyAI's roof condition assessment and other insights is a huge win for our customers."
(Source - PR Newswire)
In line with this, Attila Toth, Founder and CEO of ZestyAI, said, "Black Knight is the leading provider of rich data and analytics for the mortgage and real estate industries where real-time data and decisions are the new normal." "We're proud to provide Black Knight's clients with our unique property insights to further improve speed and accuracy during every step of the home acquisition and financing process," he concluded.
(Source - PR Newswire)
About ZestyAI
ZestyAI provides insurers and real estate firms with comprehensive intelligence on every property in North America. The company employs artificial intelligence, including computer vision, to deliver a continually updated database of 200 billion property insights, which account for every aspect that can affect a property's value and associated hazards, including the possible impact of natural disasters.
Read More