by John Helm | Apr 1, 2019 12:00:00 AM
As we were researching our new white paper, 20 for ‘20 - we learned about the multifamily technologies that are currently top of mind from the 20 senior executives who we interviewed. As we mention in the white paper, multifamily is at a technology tipping point, the like of which we have not seen since the late 1990s. This time, however, there seem to be some differences in the way that the industry is approaching new technologies.
Guest Blog by John Helm - Managing Director of Real Estate Technology Ventures
Real estate technology has significantly matured over the past few years, with seismic shifts in resident preferences changing the adoption of technology. Increasingly tech-savvy, digitally-native residents have the same expectations of their living experiences as they have for all other services they consume.
Think, for example, of the experience of booking and checking into a flight, all of which can be managed through a mobile phone and a self-service kiosk, with minimal interaction with people. By contrast, the experience of renting an apartment, with its multiple touchpoints with leasing and service professionals can seem arduous. A seamless and connected leasing service can deliver a powerful differentiator for multifamily owners while driving efficiency and in some cases creating new revenue streams. The technologies that enable these experiences are unsurprisingly the ones that are gaining the most traction.
Property owners and managers are doing more than taking the long-term perspective with the technologies they select; they are increasingly attentive to the types of companies that are building the technologies. Previous waves of technology adoption brought individual multifamily investors into the technology arena. Some did well, and others didn’t, but overall it created an environment of isolated technology successes, where individual entrepreneurs were incentivized to build the next big thing.
Today, the rise of exciting new technologies, like AI, smart-home, short-term rental platforms looks set to deliver some game-changing solutions for multifamily. What’s different is the approach to investment, as stakeholders collaborate to nurture promising technologies. RET Ventures is an example of a collaboration between industry players with an appetite for genuine best of breed solutions. Investment is fueling an ecosystem, rather than just individual bets, and this – we believe – will serve to improve resident experiences and industry returns.
John Helm has been a successful serial technology entrepreneur in multifamily housing rentals from his days at AllApartment/SpringStreet before its sale to Homestore to his time incubating and leading MyNewPlace.com. Most recently, he had the vision and energy to create Real Estate Technology Ventures, a $100 million private equity firm funded and supported by many of the leading MFH developers and operators in our industry. He is smack in the middle of how technology innovation and implementation has changed.