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.
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AGENT,REAL ESTATE ADVICE
RentSpree | December 21, 2022
RentSpree, the industry's premier end-to-end rental management software provider, is dedicated to changing the mindset around the profitability of rental properties. A 2022 RentSpree + RealTrends Rental Power Rankings study made clear that many agents do not view rentals as worthy of their time and resources. Approximately 50% of the surveyed agents claimed that the commission was "too low" for the time and effort required to lease a rental property, and 43% of surveyed agents claim that a lack of knowledge of the rental market keeps them from working in that space. In short, many real estate agents see working with rentals as a poor return on investment (ROI).
RentSpree challenges that perception and highlights how rentals can improve agent profitability year-round, especially in an economic downturn. With new insights into the misconceptions of the rental industry, here are some tips on how agents can stay ahead of the economic forecast:
Leverage the Right Resources:
With the right tools and industry knowledge, real estate agents can increase their cash flow by assisting tenants and working with landlords and property management companies. Depending on their goals, agents could work with buyers and sellers while the market is hot, and renters during a slower part of the year, highlighting how beneficial the malleability of rentals can be.
Consider Current Business Expansion:
Many agents forget or don't realize that their current business structure might already be set up to work with rental properties. If an agent already works with real estate investors to buy and sell property, they could also offer their services to fill the property with a tenant when it is move-in ready. This can be an excellent option for adding income to your business by establishing yourself as the go-to agent for buying, selling, and renting out properties in the area. As agents, time and resources are invaluable, regardless of the economic situation.
Tap Into the Value of PropTech:
Agents can lean into property technology (PropTech) tools to simplify working with rentals. PropTech gives power back to agents to work the field rather than handle time-consuming paperwork on a transaction's front or back end. The right solutions also enable real estate agents to:
Set up a listing cart to show properties to tenants through the MLS and lets them quickly help renters fill out online applications
Facilitate payment of the tenant screening fee
Pass on the paperwork to the landlord as soon as it's completed
Allow the tenants to be notified of a landlord's decision within 24 to 48 hours of applying (cutting two to five days out of the typical manual application cycle)
Boost agents' hourly earnings and return on investment exponentially.
With a fresh perspective on the fluid real estate market heading into 2023, and nearly 50 million rental properties across the United States according to numbers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau, there has never been a better time for agents to consider working with rentals.
About RentSpree
Los Angeles-based RentSpree is a provider of award-winning rental software that helps seamlessly connect real estate agents, owners, and renters to simplify and automate the entire rental process, from listing to lease. The all-in-one platform is known across all 50 states for its easy and secure interface and suite of rental tools, including tenant screening, rent payments, marketing and renter management. To date, RentSpree has partnered with more than 250 of the most influential MLSs, real estate associations and brokerages to serve over one million users in the U.S. RentSpree is ranked 625th on Inc. 5000's fastest-growing private companies in 2022.
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REAL ESTATE TECHNOLOGY,REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT
JLL | November 22, 2022
JLL Technologies (JLLT), the technology division of JLL, today announced the launch of the Strategic Technology Program, which provides assessment, strategic planning, goal setting and performance measurement services for real estate technologies.
The launch of the program is in response to increasing demand for technology solutions to help commercial real estate (CRE) managers adhere to sustainable business objectives. These services are particularly relevant now as businesses implement long-term hybrid work models and ambitious sustainability targets stemming from the pandemic.
According to JLL research, 44% of large and mid-size organizations rely on external partners and service firms to accelerate their real estate technology implementation. Among JLL's enterprise clients, demand for technology management services has increased by over 50% year-over-year. As demand has increased, JLL has invested in its technology services.
The Strategic Technology Program helps real estate leaders better manage and operate their real estate technology for optimal outcomes. Real estate leaders can use the program's technology assessment, management and measurement offerings to align their technology portfolio to their building systems and data, sustainability, and facility management objectives.
The offering helps companies in the following areas:
Building – Tools that tune buildings and workspaces to drive for optimal performance, inform sustainability objectives, and enable real estate services teams to interact with building and enterprise systems.
Workplace – Enterprise technology solutions that help maximize employee efficiency and enhance their workday experience.
Sustainability – Platforms that measure and improve energy use, water use and waste to help companies reach their net zero carbon goals.
Data & Analytics – Governance, integration, reporting and modeling that leverage data and analytics platforms to achieve financial, operational and experiential breakthroughs that power insight-driven real estate decision.
"More and more, organizations are coming to us to help them demystify the ever-expanding and increasingly complex real estate technology landscape, and ultimately use that technology to help them navigate the changing world of the workplace, Hybrid work requires technology to be successful. This offering is a great example of how we combine expertise across technology and technology services to enable our customers to select, deploy and adopt technology and accelerate their return on investment."
-Sharad Rastogi, president, JLLT
JLLT houses decades of talent from all corners of CRE – developers, technologists, brokers and more. Together with other business lines in JLL, it delivers a comprehensive portfolio of purpose-built software platforms, apps, hardware and technology services. It also offers innovations from venture-backed companies. JLLT's objective is to meet and exceed the industry's demands for transactional, operational, experiential and data-driven excellence.
JLLT is our strategic real estate technology partner, They are an extension of our internal team and a trusted delivery and thought partner. They help us drive innovation, transformation, and adoption through an actionable and measurable technology roadmap and tightly aligned business outcomes, both of which are supported by efficiently utilized people resources and technology resources,said Kathy Jones, Associate Vice President for Facilities Engineering and Planning, Rice University.
JLLT is recognized as a leading Workplace Systems Integrator by Verdantix Research and has helped thousands of clients deploy and manage technology in more than 130 countries globally, representing over 250,000 properties and more than 14 billion square feet of space.
About JLL
JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. JLL shapes the future of real estate for a better world by using the most advanced technology to create rewarding opportunities, amazing spaces and sustainable real estate solutions for our clients, our people and our communities. JLL is a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue of $19.4 billion, operations in over 80 countries and a global workforce of more than 102,000 as of September 30, 2022. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated.
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