2019 PropTech Trend Summary | Nine Four Ventures
“As 2019 comes to a close, it’s about that time for a slew of end-of-the-year summaries and trend reports. I quite enjoy them! So much so that I thought I’d write our own Nine Four Ventures version for the PropTech space.”
First Joins the RE/MAX® Team | First
“Today we are excited to announce the next phase in the evolution of First – our acquisition by RE/MAX®.
It has been a joy to work with agents across the country over the past four years. Learning from our customers, we have built a solution that has led to hundreds of additional listings won and millions of dollars in transactions captured by agents across the country.
Partnering with RE/MAX will help us fulfill our vision of changing the way agents do business at a much larger scale. We are excited about what this will mean for our First team, and for agents nationwide.”
In a rare move, Apple, Amazon, and Google just announced a major partnership | Business Insider
“Three of the world’s biggest tech companies — Apple, Amazon, and Google — are putting aside years of competition and creating a joint technology standard.
The new standard is aimed at smart-home products like Amazon’s Echo, Apple’s HomePod, and Google’s Home. It’s called “Project Connected Home Over IP,” a very specific name for a group with a very specific goal: “To develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet,” the companies announced on Wednesday.”
Is PropTech About To Have Its ‘Man On The Moon’ Moment? | Forbes
“For several years now the real estate industry’s adaption of emergent proptech has shifted gears to meet the demands and expectations of a changing market. This relationship has not always been easy, with frictions flaring between the old guard and the new over how necessary and genuinely useful these technological enhancements are for the market.
Yet as of today, proptech has grown into a massive industry with worldwide fundraising by proptech companies valued at $18 billion in 2018, according to a Deloitte report from earlier this year; and for those of us invested in the future of proptech, we see this not as a bubble, but as a reach for the stars.”
Everyone’s rushing to be an iBuyer — except for Realtor.com | The Real Deal
“It was February 2019 when Zillow co-founder Rich Barton reclaimed the CEO role in dramatic fashion, betting the future of the $8 billion company on instant home-buying.
In the months since, the Seattle-based listings giant has made good on its promise to go head-to-head with competitors ranging from Opendoor and Offerpad, to Keller Williams and Realogy.
But Zillow’s chief rival Realtor.com has remained conspicuously absent from iBuying, raising eyebrows among analysts and industry observers.”
Fire Up Sidewalk Labs’ New Software And Presto! A New Neighborhood Is Designed | Bisnow
“Using machine learning and other tools, the software can also help planners evaluate this multiplicity of design scenarios in terms of how they impact the quality of life for residents, Sidewalk Labs says. Thus, the software can help determine the options most beneficial to a very specific area. The company cites the fragmented nature of urban planning as a reason for its product, with architects, engineers and developers using separate tools and analyses to plan the same new neighborhood — with sometimes limited insight on how all the parts work together to shape a new community.”
