Wired recently published a long read called, “I stumbled across a huge Airbnb scam that’s taking over London.” Apparently the people who do these sorts of things on the platform (things that are both illegal and questionable) call it “systemizing.” This is the process of… Read More
There are a number of home equity startups in the marketplace today. A few years ago I wrote about an alternative product to HELOCs or home equity loans, called Point. And earlier this year, I wrote about a startup, called Landed, that is helping “essential… Read More
“Cities have become the basic platforms for global innovation and economic growth, supplanting the corporation as the fundamental organizing unit of the contemporary economy.” -Richard Florida Richard Florida and Patrick Adler of the Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto have been doing some research on… Read More
Today was the 2019 Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I was on a panel in the morning about Proptech. I then sat in on a discussion about construction costs. But after that I had to get back to the office to prepare for… Read More
There’s a lot of money at work right now trying to reinvent the way that homes are bought and sold. Perhaps the most popular trend is “instant buying” or algorithmic home buying. I have been writing about this for years, mostly because of Opendoor. But… Read More
I have been writing about the real estate startup Opendoor for many years here on the blog. Another promising startup in this space is Knock, and today it was announced that they just raised a $400 million Series B round (led by Foundry Group). They share… Read More
Airbnb has just announced a new initiative called Backyard, where it will be looking at new ways in which homes can be designed, built, and shared. They are, in a broad sense, becoming architects. The initiative has been in the prototyping phase for some time… Read More
A friend of mine flipped me this New York Times article today talking about the rapidly growing interest in proptech and about Opendoor – a topic and a company that I have written about many times before on the blog. Here’s a snippet about proptech:… Read More
