on Introduction Instant Buyers, or iBuyers, are companies that make instant offers to buy single family homes based on model driven valuations, such as Redfin, Zillow, and Opendoor. These types of purchases are all cash offers, and the primary benefit is increased convenience and flexibility to the home seller. The primary drawback is that iBuyers typically… Continue Reading Disrupting Housing Markets: iBuyers as Market Makers
on On October 18, 2019, the Cornell Real Estate Council welcomed leading investors and operators in real estate technology — or “PropTech” — to the 37th annual Cornell Real Estate Conference. The esteemed panel provided valuable insights into the exciting world of PropTech and the changing real estate environment in light of the ever-growing pervasiveness of… Continue Reading 37th Annual Cornell Real Estate Conference – Panel Wrap Up – PropTech: The New Buzzword
on On Thursday, March 7, Karl Mistry returned to Cornell’s Baker Program in Real Estate to deliver an insightful lecture about an oft-ignored topic in professional real estate: single-family home building. Mr. Mistry, who graduated from the program in 2004, has recently attained the title of Group President for the Virginia and Maryland regions of Toll… Continue Reading DSS Wrap-Up: Karl Mistry (’04), Group President at Toll Brothers
on The contractual elements of real estate transactions can be complex and cumbersome. In order to protect their respective positions and overcome the barrier of lack of trust, parties to a transaction are forced to utilize intermediaries such as lawyers and escrow accounts. Smart contracts are blockchain-based tools that have the potential to transform the process… Continue Reading Smart Contracts: Changing the Way We Do Deals (6 min)
on Issues around cyber security are nothing new for companies in the digital age but considering the recent headlines around the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the Equifax Credit Reporting hack, a new emphasis on how we in commercial real estate think about data protection might be warranted. Data breaches commonly involve the taking of consumer data,… Continue Reading How Vulnerable is Commercial Real Estate to a Cyber Attack? (4 mins)
on Property valuation is a necessary task for parties across the real estate industry. Development, investment, lending, and brokerage all rely on determining the value of property by either using external valuations and appraisals or by constructing internal valuation models, typically on ARGUS or Excel. Underwriting is core to the real estate industry as it is… Continue Reading The Potential of Machine Learning Real Estate Valuation Models (5 mins)
on Big data analysis and data science techniques applied to public and private datasets is nothing new, but recent growth in the quality of information and its use in commercial real estate is. Commercial real estate is a $12 trillion industry and the ability to make better data-driven decisions can save time and money for… Continue Reading Innovations in “Big Data” Are Impacting Real Estate Investment (4 mins)
on The pace of innovation in real estate has continued to grow as industry actors, entrepreneurs, and VC funders search for the next true “disruptor.” In 2017, VC funding jumped 200% to $12.6bn, up from $4.2bn in 2016[i], a testament to the potential that the VC community sees in real estate. As tech innovation continues to… Continue Reading PropTech 101: Intro to Disruption in Commercial Real Estate (4 mins)