The future of work is hybrid: Work from home and the workplace
This Week in Real Estate Innovation
THE FUTURE OF WORK & THE WORKPLACE
The future of work is hybrid: Work from home and the workplace | ZDNet
Salesforce surveyed over 3,500 consumers worldwide to gain a pulse check on how workers view the prospect of returning to the next normal. Every two weeks, Salesforce Research is surveying the general population to discover how consumers and the workforce are navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. As businesses, governments, and cities are all in different phases of reopening, they are all in a constant state of evaluating what’s safe, what’s not, and what the next weeks, months, and years will look like…
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & ROBOTICS
NGen invests $5 million into manufacturing of disinfection robots | Robotics & Automation News
Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen), the industry-led organization leading Canada’s Advanced Manufacturing Supercluster, is co-investing $5 million in projects leading to the development and production in Canada of automated hands-free disinfection technologies to help stop the spread of coronavirus.
Five outstanding projects have been selected for funding under NGen’s Disinfection Robot Challenge. With matching contributions from industry, total value of these projects will exceed $10 million.
STATE OF THE MARKET
Real Estate Prices Fall Sharply in New York | NY Times
The coronavirus has dealt a blow to the Manhattan real estate market unmatched in recent history, and the prospects of a near-term recovery remain unclear.
The number of closed sales in the second quarter was down 54 percent compared to the same period last year, the largest decline in at least 30 years, according to a new report from the brokerage Douglas Elliman. The median sales price fell 17.7 percent, compared to the same time last year, to $1 million, the biggest drop in a decade…
Lisbon Has a Plan to Reclaim Housing From Airbnb | Bloomberg
Across the world’s cities, vacation apartments that were fully booked this time last year lie empty. Affected by lockdowns, quarantine measures and social distancing, it seems likely that the Airbnb-dominated short-stay market will not fully return to pre-pandemic levels for some time—if ever. For cities that draw many visitors, that leaves a question mark over the fate of apartments that previously catered to tourists…
Why Singapore Has One of the Highest Home Ownership Rates | Bloomberg
In the movie “Crazy Rich Asians,” the main characters move between opulent mansions and colonial-era hotels in Singapore. But the reality is the vast majority of families live in modestly-sized apartments built by the government—concentrated, high-rise housing estates that elsewhere in the world might, to some, conjure images of low-income urban blight. Yet here, the concrete suburbs are well-maintained by the state and their basic, functional flats are lovingly renovated by the owners, often with the help of professional interior designers using the finest materials…
PROPTECH NEWS
Apartments Become Silicon Valley’s Hot New Thing | WSJ
California’s housing crisis has turned housing development into an obsession for tech giants such as Google and Facebook. Now, more venture-backed startups are getting into the game.
The latest is Juno Residential Inc., a San Francisco-based company co-founded by Apple and Tesla veterans and backed by Khosla Ventures. The firm, which was founded quietly last year and is to be launched officially on Tuesday, hopes to make the building of apartments more efficient by using mass-production techniques such as those employed in automotive and electronics manufacturing…
Industry-first as PropTech platform signs race equality statement | Letting Agent TODAY
In what is claimed to be an industry first, PropTech platform Goodlord has signed the Race Fairness Commitment.
This commits Goodlord to following data-driven measures to combat the career obstacles faced by Black, Asian and ethnic minority colleagues, as defined by diversity recruitment consultancy Rare.
We Got Funded: Kuwait-Born PropTech Startup Ajar Closes Pre-Series A Round | Forbes
Proptech startup Ajar has closed its pre-Series A round with the participation of investors SBX Capital, 500 Startups, and Seed Partner. Though the size of the latest capital infusion was undisclosed, the startup announced that its latest investment was a multi-million round, with it stating that it has raised a total of US$7.5 million to date. The platform had previously raised capital from BECO Capital and Sharq Ventures…
