Curated daily by our industry experts. Stay informed on how tech is shaping the real estate industry with these important headlines.
Smart Cities World
Proptech company Planet Smart City, that designs and builds smart affordable neighbourhoods, has completed the acquisition of Djungle, a digital services developer. Djungle specialises in the design of digital solutions for customer engagement and loyalty in the retail sector.
Builder Online
For years, single-family home builders have lamented that they can’t build affordable, first-time starter homes and still make a profit. That started to change in 2019, when, after sales of luxury and move-up homes dwindled in 2018, builders such as Meritage, Lennar, and KB Home followed the lead of D.R. Horton’s Express brand and pivoted toward entry-level product. The surprising part was they were even able to make money doing it.
VC Circle
SoftBank-backed hospitality chain Oyo has raised Rs 54 crore ($7.4 million) in fresh funding from Hindustan Media Ventures amid signs of recovery in the sector badly hit by pandemic.
Smart Cities Dive
The California Department of Motor Vehicles last week issued the state’s first autonomous vehicle (AV) deployment permit to Nuro, allowing the company to launch a fee-based driverless delivery business in two Bay Area counties.
PlaceTech.
Biophilic design specialist Vitesy has raised €1.2m in investment, valuing the company at €15m on the back of rising interest in indoor air quality. Vitesy products are designed San Francisco and manufactured in Italy. The company creates smart devices for air purification and monitoring using internet of things connections, combined with plants, nanomaterials and other technology to monitor and reduce air pollution.
Forbes
Markets are roiling thanks to Covid-19, with no sign of the turbulence halting in 2021. If you own an office building, coworking space or hotel chain—well, best of luck. But if you’re trying to sell your home, now may be the best of times. To take stock of these messy times, Forbes spoke with Eric Anton, a broker at Marcus & Millichap in New York City….
Wall Street Journal
Unlikely as it may sound, grocery stores are becoming dream properties—coveted but hard to prise away from their owners. Changes to accounting rules are just one reason why it has become less appealing for supermarkets to sell their real estate.
Wall Street Journal
Lending startup SoFi is going public through a combination with the special-purpose acquisition company Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings Corp. V, IPOE -1.57% in a deal that values the company at $8.65 billion, the companies said….
Bisnow
One of the largest commercial real estate services companies in the U.S. just added another service. JLL has launched a division specifically for advising single-family rental investment, the company announced in a statement on Thursday. The new arm will be under the JLL Capital Markets Group and led by Bill Miller, co-head of JLL Multi-Housing Group. Also joining the national team will be Matthew Putterman, Chris Shea and Zach Nolan….
IEEE Spectrum
Companies like Tesla, Uber, Cruise, and Waymo promise a future where cars are essentially mobile robots that can take us anywhere with a few taps on a smartphone. But a new category of vehicles is about to overtake self-driving cars in that leap into the future. Autonomous trucks have been quietly making just as much, if not more, progress toward commercial deployment, and their impact on the transportation of goods will no doubt be profound….
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