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☆ Shares of Better.com — whose CEO fired 900 workers on a Zoom call — slumped as much as 95% on their first day of trade
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-25 | by ( Huileng Tan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Shares of online mortgage lender Better.com slumped as much as 95% after its Nasdaq debut. They fell so quickly that trading was halted four times in the first 30 minutes. Better.com CEO Vishal Garg brutally laid off 900 employees via a Zoom call in 2021. Shares of the Softbank-backed online mortgage lender — which had merged with blank-check company Aurora Acquisition Corp. — plunged at the opening bell. Better.com's disastrous debut on the Nasdaq followed dramatic turns at the digital mortgage company since December 2021 when CEO Vishal Garg brutally laid off 900 employees on a Zoom call.

Persons: Better.com, Vishal Garg, Insider's Alex Nicoll, Better.com's, Fortune Organizations: Nasdaq, Service, & Finance, Aurora Acquisition Corp, —, Aurora Locations: Wall, Silicon

☆ The CEO who brutally fired hundreds of the people on Zoom is taking his startup public in a move that could make or break him
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Vishal Garg is taking Better, a mortgage startup, public through a long-delayed SPAC deal. Read what he said about making strategic acquisitions and the millions in company loans that stand to be forgiven. But CEO Vishal Garg, known for brutally laying off hundreds of employees via Zoom, insists he has a plan. One former employee told Insider that the move seems like a "Hail Mary," both for Garg personally and for the business more broadly. Here is what Garg said about his vision for the company and how he will spend the money Better receives from the IPO.

Persons: Vishal Garg, Garg, SPACs, Mary, refinancings, it's, SoftBank, indemnifying, —, It'll Organizations: & Finance, Aurora Acquisition Corp, Nasdaq, World Trade Center, Federal Reserve, Silicon, Better, Mortgage, SEC, Scotsman, Aurora, Insider Locations: Garg, refinancings, Queens , NY

☆ Are office buildings the next 'Big Short' or the next widow-maker trade? The trader behind the ubersuccessful mall short shares his playbook for making money without flaming out.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

Dan McNamara's Polpo Capital is shorting office real estate, a risky move that could be lucrative. If you're looking for a doomsday vision of commercial real estate, you can find it there. "I don't think this is the 'Big Short,'" McNamara told me. This doesn't mean he doesn't have a game plan to make money off cultural shifts that could forever change the state of commercial real estate. Lucas Jackson/ReutersWhere he's going longOne risk of shorting real estate is that it's more susceptible to what's known in real-estate circles as "extend and pretend."

Persons: Dan McNamara's, McNamara, it's, It's, shorting, Carl Icahn, Jim Chanos, Brendan McDermid, Dan McNamara, McNamara's, Braver Stern, Dan McNamara McNamara's, suede loafers, McNamara didn't, Josh Nester, Polpo, he's, Morgan Stanley, Kamil Sadik, Lucas Jackson, Manus Clancy, You've, David Tepper's, Trepp's Clancy, Clancy, David Tepper Organizations: Central Park, New, Polpo, New York University, Columbia, Kynikos Associates, Enron, Asset Management, Reuters, UBS, Co, Societe Generale, Securitized Credit Partners, Credit Suisse, MP, Fund, Bloomberg, of America, Simon Property, Federal Locations: Manhattan, Sixth, Central, New York City, New York, MatlinPatterson, America, China, Italy, Westchester , New York, Tribeca, York, Westchester, Waterford , Connecticut, Baltimore, San Francisco

☆ Check out the pitch deck that Measurabl, a real estate startup that boasts Major League Baseball as a client, used to raise $93 million during a proptech fundraising drought
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-07 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Regulators and investors are putting pressure on the real estate industry to go green. The most obvious end-users are commercial real estate owners, but Ellis says the revenue potential is far bigger than that. The company's fundraising comes as more policymakers seek to require landlords and real estate investors to reduce their carbon emissions. Capital hasn't been far behind, with leading proptech venture fund Fifth Wall raising a $500 million fund to decarbonize real estate. See the deck, minus confidential financial information, that Measurabl used to raise its monster $93 million round below.

Persons: Matt Ellis, Ellis, Bob Sulentic, CBRE's, CBRE, Measurabl, hasn't Organizations: Major League Baseball, Energy Impact Partners, Sway Ventures, Suffolk Construction, Colliers, Lincoln Property Company, New Locations: San Diego, Real, Suffolk, Measurabl

☆ Wall Street landlords are selling homes back to Main Street. Here's what it might mean for runaway housing prices.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-03 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

The companies — Invitation Homes and AMH — have already sold 1003 homes this year, through July, to non-corporate buyers, according to Insider's analysis of data from real estate tracker Attom Data. The group, which has included Wall Street firms like Blackstone (which spun off Invitation Homes), has been blamed for exacerbating the housing shortage that has pushed real-estate prices sky-high. One exception might be in 2019 when Invitation Homes sold 785 homes to non-corporate buyers, versus 225 sales through July of this year. The lack of housing supply, which has kept prices high even as mortgage rates rise, makes selling homes in markets that cost more to operate rentals a profitable play. In reporting earnings last week, Invitation Homes increased its core revenue guidance for the rest half of the year because its rent prices actually outperformed expectations.

Persons: —, AMH, Jon Olsen, execs, Dallas Tanner, Tanner, Gary Beasley, Roofstock, Beasley, He's, Dave Singelyn, Singelyn Organizations: Attom, Wall, Blackstone, Invitation Homes, SFR, Invitation, MLS, Homes, Sun, Wall Street, Homeowners, Seller Services Locations: SFR, New York City, America

☆ Commercial real estate loans are the next big risk for lenders. See the top 20 banks with the most property debt exposure, from JPMorgan to Wells Fargo.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-20 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Rising interest rates and remote work have put commercial real estate in the hot seat. With the help of Trepp, we've compiled a list of the top bank lenders for commercial real estate. The rising property losses are the result of rising interest rates, which have dramatically increased the cost of borrowing for highly leveraged commercial real estate investors. Office property owners are most at risk thanks to the remote-work phenomenon, which has been emptying out offices for three years now. Big names like Blackstone, Brookfield, and Starwood all have defaulted on properties and real estate securities in recent months.

Persons: we've, Wells, Chase, It's, Goldman Sachs, Newmark, Michael Santomassimo, Santomassimo, We've Organizations: JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Starwood, Bank of America, Signature Bank, New York Community Bank, Mortgage Bankers Association, Wells, Trepp, Federal Reserve, SEC Locations: Blackstone, Brookfield

☆ Helping investors buy thousands of run-down houses on the cheap was to be the specialty of this proptech. Not even Dr. Phil could save it.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-05 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Stech told the wholesaler that the woman deserved some of that profit. "He looked me square in the eyes and said, 'That's all she said she needed,'" Stech told Dr. Phil. But Sundae, Stech said, marketed homes directly to investors, who would bid up the price in an effort to win the property. Two of the former Sundae employees told Insider that they often had to make determinations about the mental fitness of their elderly customers. When Insider asked Canavari about the layoffs in June, she told Insider that she was leaving the company herself.

Persons: Sundae, it's, Josh Stech, Phil, Phil —, —, Phil's, Stech, who'd, Andrew Swain Sundae, Peter Thiel's, Will Smith, Isaiah Thomas, HomeVestors, Susan Canavari, Canavari, Phil McGraw, Chris Terry, Terry, Opendoor, I'd, Dawn Tarner, Beth Sallomi Organizations: Fund, Investors, Getty, Facebook Locations: Sundae, Vegas, mailers, Atlanta, Florida

☆ Office landlords struggling for tenants are facing an even scarier predicament — zombie properties
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-03 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

A zombie building is one that's too costly for a landlord to rent at prevailing rates. Office buildings purchased in the past five years could become zombies, a real-estate vet said. Like many New York office buildings, it's a dead man walking, similar to the hopelessly distressed shopping malls that have multiplied across the country over the past decade. One in four office buildings in Manhattan is valued at less than they last sold for, according to JLL. Bringing zombies back to lifeUnlike in the movies, zombie buildings don't remain undead forever.

Persons: Knotel, Michael Cohen, Cohen, —, haven't, RXR, Chetrit, HPS Organizations: New York, Macmillan Publishers, Manhattan, BNP, Real Estate, Green —, Blackstone, Chetrit, HPS Investment Partners Locations: New, New York City, New York, Manhattan, That's, HPS

☆ With more than $1 billion in deals in the works, Wall Street is poised to get back into the home buying game
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Wall Street landlords raised $110 billion to buy homes but have had a quiet year. One large transaction, and one large listing, could signal that investors are ready to start buying. The single-family rental market, a popular playground of Wall Street landlords in 2020 and 2021, has been in a deep-freeze for the last year. Rising borrowing costs and a shakier housing market halted most transactions, leaving idle much of the $110 billion raised to buy homes. The company, which was valued at nearly $2 billion last year, says it has facilitated more than $5 billion in deals.

Persons: dealmaking, Goldman Sachs, Don Mullen, DR, Barry Sternlicht's, redemptions, Gary Beasley, Roofstock, Allison Arest, Topping, Beasley, Morgan Stanley's, Ellen Zentner, Jay Powell, LeMaistre, everybody's Organizations: Bloomberg, Barry Sternlicht's Starwood Group, Fed Locations: Beach

☆ Commercial real estate has taken a beating. But recovery may be slow for one big reason.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-05 | by ( Al Yoon | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Investment volume in commercial real estate fell off a cliff last quarter. But with few transactions on which to peg market values, is the market truly down? Last week, Alfred Brooks, the head of JPMorgan's commercial real estate group, said he's seen distressed buyers already raising money to pick up the pieces, once prices get low enough. Indeed, commercial real estate values are down, by other measures. April was the first month since 2010 that prices of all types of commercial property fell on an annual basis, according to MSCI.

Persons: haven't, —, dealmaking, It's, Alfred Brooks, he's, Richard Rubin, Insider's Alex Nicoll, Rubin, Blackstone, MSCI Organizations: Bank of America, Service, BofA Global Research, RCA, BofA Global

For the last few years, Insider has been spotlighting up-and-comers on Wall Street. We've asked the rising stars about the books that informed both their careers and personal growth. If you're looking for a book to pack for your summer vacation, we've got you covered. Over the last few years, we've asked our Wall Street rising stars to recommend books to our readers and how these must-reads helped them succeed in their careers. So if you're interested in reading what Wall Street reads, look no further than this selection of 35 books below.

Persons: We've, we've

☆ Wall Street landlords with billions in their coffers have gone silent, patiently waiting for cheaper homes to buy
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

For the first two or so years of the pandemic, it looked like big, corporate landlords would buy up so many rental homes that they'd soon control the market that had been the purview of mom-and-pop owners. But five months in, the lull that started the year persists, said analysts at John Burns Real Estate Consulting, a purveyor of real-estate data. According to JT Graham, a John Burns analyst who attended an April conference of the SFR lobbying group National Home Rental Council, the buzzword there was "patience." For those that do make the trip, they can console themselves that the industry's fundamentals are strong enough to offset headwinds such as soaring taxes and slowing rent growth, John Burns analysts said. They're also able to absorb defaults and vacancies in the way small landlords can't as their costs increase.

☆ See the pitch deck a startup trying to rival Airbnb used to raise $14 million to turn entire buildings in Miami and Nashville into short-term-rental apartments for bachelor parties and big groups
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

CEO Andreas King-Geovanis walked Insider through the pitch deck he used to raise the funds. Guests can book units in more than 15 Roami buildings across Miami, New Orleans, Nashville, and Austin on Airbnb or Booking.com. King-Geovanis said that the end of 2022 was a challenging time to raise funds as a short-term-rental business. That's why the pitch deck King-Geovanis used during the recent fundraise focused so heavily on Roami's profitability, partly due to labor- and cost-saving technologies. King-Geovanis walked Insider through the pitch deck he used to raise Roami's latest round.

☆ Giant loans on 10 major US office towers are due soon, stoking fears of more defaults that could be the next crisis to hit banks — and the economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

About $80 billion in office loans come due this year, threatening defaults. High-profile owners like Blackstone and Brookfield have walked away from major office loans as high interest rates and tighter lending levels have made refinancing debts more costly. Some analysts have even said that commercial real estate debt is the next big danger for the stock market. The leading research firm analyzing commercial real estate debt, Trepp, has a front-row seat to the reckoning. Office landlords' leasing, and therefore revenue, has fallen significantly due to the rise of remote work.

☆ This real estate company helps developers pivot between hotel, short- and long-term living spaces. See the pitch deck behind its $65 million funding round.
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Things have changed drastically in the world of real estate since the coronavirus upended life three years ago. It has also set up a real estate fund in the OpCo/PropCo model, for purchasing real estate on its own. "If you strip down the emotional piece of it, the most valuable real estate is real estate that has an increased cash flow and reduced volatility," Fudin said. The company is now betting on another post-COVID trend — the conversion of obsolete office buildings into other uses, such as housing. Placemakr recently announced a $65 million Series C, with capital raised from experienced proptech venture capital players Camber Creek and real estate investors like Bernstein Management Corporation.

☆ Big apartment landlords lean in to AI and proptechs as profit squeezes loom
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Apartment landlords are getting squeezed by rising interest rates and insurance costs . interest rates and insurance . But some big US landlords were already waist-deep in labor-saving technologies of their own to ward off profit squeezes, like the ones many are facing today. On the supply side, the race has been on for some time to sell landlords on tech that works. In this case, landlords are adapting to today's higher interest rates from a time when borrowing costs were low and taking any pressure off operations, he said.

☆ Jamie Dimon's 'tone deaf' return to office mandate is getting pushback from JPMorgan staffers, who are complaining about being stuck on Zoom calls even while in the office: Reuters
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Nidhi Pandurangi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

JPMorgan is now mandating all managing directors work from the office five days a week. But that rubbed some workers the wrong way, who vented on an internal messaging system, per Reuters. They griped about being stuck in virtual meetings despite being in the office, long commutes, and family responsibilities. In the same video, Clarke even lauded one employee's work ethic who he said "sold their family dog" to improve work performance. Read the JPMorgan return to office memo in full here.

☆ Remote work is 'bullshit,' says real-estate billionaire Sam Zell, to cheers from fellow execs who profit from offices
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Sam Zell said at a conference last week that remote work is "a bunch of bullshit." Office doomers abound, but real estate professionals t hink they just don't get it. Sam Zell, the notorious "Grave Dancer" of commercial real estate known for his salty tongue, is always happy to have a platform. He was in a cheeky mood, at least when the conversation turned to today's third-rail of commercial real estate: office properties abandoned by remote workers. The trend and dire outlook had real estate giant Brookfield defaulting on a loan tied to offices this month for the second time this year.

☆ Single-family rentals were stars of real estate during the pandemic. Now the sector faces its biggest challenges yet.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The SFR sector is facing fresh challenges this year, however, two KBRA analysts said. If you were an institutional investor looking to invest in real estate during the height of the pandemic, single-family rental properties were probably on your list. Home prices were rising quickly, and borrowing costs were low, underpinning the fundamentals of residential real estate. What's more, real estate research and investment-banking firm Zelman & Associates has estimated there's $110 billion in investor capital waiting to be spent on homes. Labor and supply costs have risen consistently, and massive home price appreciation is resulting in higher real estate taxes.

Organizations: & ' $

☆ Some new offices are mini towns with their own restaurants, doctor offices, and hotels. Workers actually want to go.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The idea is getting replicated from the Bell Labs location, or Bell Works New Jersey, Keating said. The spaces run by Bell Works' own coworking brand, CoLab, are nearly 100% occupied. At Bell Works New Jersey, Zucker partnered with Toll Brothers to build a 185-home 55-and-over community. At BRIC, tenants can take advantage of a dozen art galleries, some of which show the work of building tenants. A lobby area near offices at Bell Works Chicagoland.

☆ Big real estate landlords are finally starting to decarbonize, creating an $18 trillion market that this Blackstone portfolio company plans to profit from at every turn
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The Blackstone portfolio company Legence wants to be a one-stop shop for landlords. A Real Estate Board of New York study found that the total penalties could top $213 million. Its ICS became the strategic planner, its CMTA, which designed the first net-zero school in the United States, designed the upgrades, and its Gilbert Mechanical installed the new heating, cooling, ventilation, and lighting hardware. How to do itIt may still be a challenge to coordinate decarbonization processes, which don't come naturally to large-scale real-estate operators, Boland said. Legence plans to grow the business's geographic scope and increase its depth in current markets, including Colorado and California, Sprau said.

Organizations: & $

☆ Commercial real estate is struggling with rising rates and bank woes, but the cohead of a $21 billion lender said it's the best time in his more than 20 year career
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

High interest rates, office woes, and less bank funding are chilling commercial real estate. But a top commercial real estate lender said there's never been a better time for firms like his. It's a bleak time in commercial real estate, and it can be hard to find any rays of sunshine. One Bank of America analyst just warned commercial real estate presents a major risk regional banks that own a disproportionate 68% of the sector's loans. While interest rate uncertainty is clouding the commercial real estate outlook, some transactions could provide clarity to the market, de Haan said.

☆ Commercial real estate loans are the next major risk for banks, a top analyst said. Here are the top 20 institutions exposed to property debt.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Silicon Valley Bank's historic collapse this month helped trigger the failures of a few other financial institutions and weeks of chaos in the world of finance. On Friday, a Bank of America analyst pinpointed commercial-real-estate loans as the next major risk for banks. Regional banks like Silicon Valley Bank hold 68% of all commercial-real-estate loans, many tied to struggling sectors, like office buildings. Even more worrisome, a massive $450 billion in commercial-real-estate loans is maturing this year, and most of that is held by banks. Silicon Valley Bank wasn't a major lender to the sector, but the failed Signature Bank, the 10th-largest lender on this list, was.

Last year VCs invested $19.8 billion into these property-technology, or proptech, startups. We surveyed venture capitalists to identify the hottest proptech companies right now. Climatetech and AI-powered tools are major themes of the proptech industry in 2023, just as they are in the wider venture world. Insider asked more than 20 venture investors who focus on real-estate and construction technology to nominate the most exciting proptech startups in 2023. Here are the 26 buzziest proptech companies right now, presented in alphabetical order.

☆ Snakes, rats and reptilian squatters: single family rental investors get a rude awakening as landlords
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Single-family-rental landlords are like most other homeowners, just at scale. Indeed, rising interest rates have drastically reduced access to capital for everyone, including single-family landlords who've borrowed heavily to finance their purchases. Here are a few stories of the wild world of institutional single-family-rental property management. An iguana stuck inside a Divvy Homes property in Florida. Single-family-rental landlords face the twin challenges of customer service and homeownership, often at the same time.

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