Lifting the lid on New York Real Estate Tech Week

I just got back to the UK after a jam-packed week of networking in New York over hot dogs and IPAs. The city that never sleeps was an apt setting for one of the must-attend events of the year for real estate and tech companies alike. And so, for those who couldn’t make it, I have done a round-up of one of the most significant events in the proptech calendar. New York Real Estate Tech Week is effectively a five-day-long stint of non-stop tech and real estate events across the city from Manhattan to Brooklyn, with Mipim Proptech New York in partnership with MetaProp anchoring proceedings with a two-day event in the middle of the week. Building the future It all kicked off on the Monday morning with Propmodo’s annual conference focusing this year on “Building the Future”. Speakers included Rajdeep Gahir, chief executive and co-founder of Vivahouse, which transforms city buildings into dynamic and energetic co-living spaces, and Zach Aarons, co-founder and partner at MetaProp. Two great keynotes covered everything from the future of living to the illuminati. Have you ever heard someone talk about the illuminati on stage at a real estate event before? Neither had I. It was crazy and left-field, but I loved it. A networking boat party on the Hudson River rounded off day one and saw us sail off into the sunset on the last non-freezing day of the week. Tuesday and Wednesday did not give us a break though, as delegates wrapped up warm and descended on Manhattan’s Midtown district for Mipim Proptech New York. What I was most interested in seeing here were the swaths of new start-ups exhibiting from all over the world. I have to say that there still weren’t as many completely new ones as I would have liked, but there can be no question that there was an exponential increase from the years before. Putting the brakes on CO2 As for the speakers and the on-stage content, there were too many brilliant panels and talks to mention them all but a special shout-out to one of my absolute favourites: the climate change panel. In answer to my question on whether we are “already doomed” the response was maybe but that it was on a gradient, and the key was to work hard together to ensure we are doomed slower than we otherwise could be This is where speakers including Sidewalk Labs’ head of sustainability came together to debate, discuss and deliberate. They concluded that it is indeed real estate’s responsibility to fight climate change by not only building lower carbon construction processes but also significantly reducing carbon dioxide and pollutants output from building operations. In answer to my question on whether we are “already doomed” the response was maybe but that it was on a gradient, and the key was to work hard together to ensure we are doomed slower than we otherwise could be. I also met a very inspiring lady from a Nigerian real estate developer who was attending the event for “research” to report back home what “proptech” may help them with. It was fascinating to hear about the challenges cities and real estate companies face in developing countries. It is just a whole different ball game compared to what we are working on in London and NYC. For the attendees who were not too exhausted by Thursday, there was an event on proptech’s impact on operations and the “tenant experience”, which is becoming a standard term for landlord’s multi-tenanted building experience. For me, tenant experience goes hand in hand with workplace experience and ultimately merges into one community experience for everyone working in a particular office or building. I truly believe 2020 is going to be the year that “community experience” becomes a commonly used term in any asset managers or property managers vocabulary. I will take bets on this one. Celebrating women Thursday evening was the first ever Women in Proptech awards. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners of this event, which is a necessary and overdue celebration of the fearless female executives and founders in our industry. More awards like these please, although the next WiPT awards event could actually be a gala dinner instead of a cocktail reception – we will work on this together. All in all, it was a brilliant week, which feels more like a class reunion than a work conference, although as proptech is outgrowing the real estate sector’s expectation year-on-year, we may end up not recognising any of our classmates as more and more new founders and executives break into this space. And that can only be a good thing. My final thought would be why don’t we have a London Real Estate Tech Week yet and who wants my help organising it? Vanessa Lee Butz is founder and chief executive of District Technolgies