Complete Homebuying, Selling Experience: OJO Labs Raises $62.5M, Acquires Movoto

Austin-based OJO Labs closed on a $62.5 million round of funding led by Wafra, the company said Wednesday in a release. OJO Labs, founded in 2015, combines human and machine intelligence to provide personalized property recommendations and insights. Breyer Capital, LiveOak Venture Partners, Royal Bank of Canada and Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures also participated in the new round of capital that gives OJO Labs a total raise of $71.5 million, according to Crunchbase data. The company’s last …

Sonder Closes $170M Funding Round

he San Francisco-based company, which leases apartments and turns them into furnished short-term rentals, said it closed a Series E at a $1.3 billion valuation — up from its prior valuation of $1.1 billion.

[TOMORROW] The Institutional Investors Perspective: The Reactivation of CRE Investment Management

Investors have begun understanding the near and long term implications of the global pandemic on real estate assets and on their portfolios. As leading investors begin to reactivate their investment strategies, many are instituting new standards to invest smarter, increase productivity, and grow their business — resulting in better financials, communication, and management of assets.

Lower Manhattan Offers Clues on How to Live Post-Pandemic

As New York City looks to reinvent itself for the post-pandemic era, lower Manhattan offers a few lessons on how to recover from disaster. Once largely a 9-to-5 financial center, the district has changed since the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks into a walkable neighborhood that has more than doubled its residential population. Officials’ determination to transform the area made it more resilient to the sort of economic shocks the entire city now faces: widespread job losses and the threat of p…

NYC Subway System May Implement Temperature Checks, Robot Cleaners

Officials overseeing New York’s transit system should consider thermal cameras to take riders’ temperatures and artificial intelligence to assess mask-wearing to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, a new report says. The report, which was commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, offers a range of best practices gleaned from transit systems around the world.

Manhattan Coworking Firm The Assemblage Abruptly Shuts Down

How the Coronavirus Recovery Is Changing Cities

If one thing is certain, it’s that our definition of normal has changed. After months in lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, cities are reopening — some with masks and social distance, others with still growing numbers of infection. It’s unclear what cities will look like in a year or more, but in many areas the landscape is already starting to shift. …

NoMad Landlord Sues Knotel for $169K in Missed Rent During Coronavirus

Knotel allegedly owes $169,040 to 25 West 26th Street Inc. — which property records tie to Brooklyn-based Noam Management — after it stopped paying rent from March until June for its 10,000-square-foot space at 25 West 26th Street, between Broadway and Avenue of the Americas, according to the lawsuit filed yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court.

HelloOffice Raises $20M in Series A Funding

The new funds will be invested in HelloOffice’s property search and management platform to help companies build out and reconfigure space and workplace strategy. Global capital firm Point72 Ventures — founded by billionaire Steven A. Cohen — led the investment series, with additional contributions from Alexis Ohanian’s and Garry Tan’s Initialized Capital, as well as Founders Fund, SaaStr, Jake Gibson, House Fund and more.

Property Owner Simon Sees Buying Tenants as a Way to Boost Malls

Simon Property Group Inc. is digging into its wallet to rescue another big tenant, a move that could help stabilize its mall business but one that raises new questions about the industry’s longer-term viability, analysts say. The biggest mall owner in the U.S. by number of malls is teaming up with Brookfield Property Partners, another large owner of shopping centers, in exploring a bid for J.C. Penney Co., according to a person familiar with the matter. The department-store chain filed for bankr…