My home is my (virtual) castle: The status of property and real estate tech

After some weeks of silence due to a lot of traveling and fundraising (more news on that to be published soon), we are back in this thing called internet. Glad to see you are all still here!

Some weeks ago, we continued our expert roundtable series and joined forces with Tishman Speyer for a dedicated property and real estate tech event at beautiful Junghof in Frankfurt/Main. About 60 guests from all branches of the “traditional” real estate world (planning, developing, financing, administering) met with start-ups, academia and investors to discuss the status of the industry, exciting trends and technologies with true transformational potential, obstacles to transformation, etc.

Traditional players facing major challenges

The participants enjoyed a combination of short impulse lectures, focused discussions, “breakout sessions” and the informal setting to effectively network. Although fully virtual homes transforming not only real estate, but also furniture and all adjacent industries alike, are definitely not there yet, everybody agreed that the real estate industry is about to undergo major changes within the next years. This fact was stressed by Raphael Gielgen, Vitra’s Head of Research and Trendscouting, and exemplified by the following participating start-ups:

• Allthings: Allthings offers a digital solution to make properties more efficient, transparent and valuable — for owners, property managers and tenants.
• Wunderflats: Wunderflats establishes the concept of housing as a service by offering fully furnished apartments.
• iFunded: iFunded transforms real estate financing with its platform for online real estate investments for everyone.
• Archilogic: Archilogic transforms floor plans into interactive 3D models using image recognition and machine learning.
• VR First: VR First’s central vision is to democratize VR/AR innovation, opening huge opportunities amongst others in real estate (think of “virtual enhancements” of homes).

A big thank you to all participants and to the colleagues at Tishman Speyer and GTEC for making this event a success! If you are interested in the presentations shown at the event, just shoot me an email.

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Happy holidays everybody!