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☆ How tech groundbreaker Greg Smithies went from Elon Musk's inner circle to tackling real estate's $18 trillion carbon-emissions problem
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-02 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Greg Smithies leads the biggest fund focused on the decarbonization of real estate. Smithies has worked on sustainability issues and with Elon Musk's The Boring Company. But Smithies is no stranger to investment-led decarbonization efforts, having tackled the problem for much of his career. "At the end of the day, software isn't going to solve the climate crisis," Smithies said. But above all, he's focused on the money and the potential savings that low-carbon technology can have on real estate.

☆ Some Florida homeowners have to wait a year to fix hurricane damage, and that's only one of the many struggles they face
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-31 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Hurricane Ian was the second-costliest hurricane in US history, causing up to $65 billion in damage. Florida homeowners face other challenges, too, from rising insurance costs to suffering home values. In December, about three months after Hurricane Ian struck the Gulf Coast of Florida, the sounds of construction rung out in one community. Meanwhile, roofers are overstretched, said Mike Silvers, the director of technical services of the Florida Roofing and Sheet Metal Contractors Association. Out-of-state contractors both have to learn Florida's code and become licensed in the state in order to do any roofing work.

☆ A band of immigrant tenants went to war with their $31 billion landlord. It's a sneak peek at what's to come across America.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +16 min

In Alexandria, Virginia, $31 billion landlord CIM Group bought a massive apartment complex in 2020. The group was organizing against CIM Group, the landlord they said had upended their lives. Insider spoke with 10 Southern Towers tenants. The battle between the Southern Towers tenants and CIM could presage what's to come across America. "We're not going to leave"The Southern Towers tenants aren't the only ones following the money.

☆ See the pitch deck a startup used to raise $4 million to buy, sell, and manage short-term-rental properties
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-27 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Investors love short-term rentals, but they face pitfalls with property management and regulation. Rove, a marketplace and property-management startup, helps investors underwrite short-term rentals. Jonah Hanig, the CEO of Rove, walked Insider through the pitch deck Rove used to raise $4 million. "In Park City, Utah, there are roughly 500 properties for sale, but only approximately 100 are in areas where you can use them as short-term rentals," Hanig told Insider. The ultimate goal is to create "Zillow" for short-term rentals with the added feature of underwritng and valuing properties based on their potential incomes.

☆ Proptech is losing money left and right, but Fifth Wall's Brendan Wallace is ready to spend $866 million as the sector enters its 'proving ground'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-26 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Fifth Wall's Brendan Wallace says today's rough markets are a "proving ground" for the industry. Earlier this year, it announced a $500 million climate fund and a $147 European proptech fund. There are also fewer paths to go public, as the blank-check-company model that takes companies public with fewer disclosures via a merger has dried up. After successfully bringing SmartRent public via its own blank-check company in 2021, Fifth Wall canceled its second blank-check company in March of this year. Procore, which raised $634.5 million in a public offering in May 2021, is an investor in the new Fifth Wall fund.

Insider's rising stars of real estate span roles in leasing, affordable housing, and urban planning. We asked the young achievers about the books that influenced their careers or personal growth. For some of Insider's rising stars of 2022, the subject matter might surprise you. Other rising stars told Insider they wanted to learn from the trials and tribulations of successful people, like the Nike cofounder Phil Knight. Below, find the selection of 29 books that influenced the rising stars, along with their musings of what they learned or how they applied the lessons to their practices.

For the last five 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 struggling to come up with a good gift for a successful dealmaker or trader, 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 have an overachieving Wall Streeter in your life, look no further than this selection of 35 books below.

☆ The SEC is reaching out to Blackstone and Starwood after the real-estate giants limited investors' withdrawals from their funds, report says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Rebecca Ungarino | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Investors are pulling their money from big real estate funds at a quick pace. Blackstone and Starwood recently limited investors' ability to withdraw. The real estate funds have recently seen a surge in withdrawal requests amid a broad drop in investor sentiment and potential economic downturn. Representatives for the SEC and Starwood did not immediately return requests for comment on Friday. But this year has brought challenges as the real estate market sours and more investors are turning bearish.

☆ VCs slashed proptech investments by nearly 40% this year after steep losses and job cuts showed them the sector wasn't all it was cracked up to be
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Proptech investment is down 38% from 2021, according to a new report. The proptech industry is being hit by slowdowns in both real estate and technology. High interest rates are major inhibitors of both real estate investment and tech investment, which both rely on debt. It reflects waning confidence that proptech companies can continue to give their investors big dollar exits. In 2021, private investors could imagine the path to the public markets.

☆ Regular people can pay for a day pass to swim in pools at Ritz-Carlton hotels. Here's the pitch deck ResortPass used to raise $26 million from investors like The Points Guy, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jessi
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-07 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The company raised $26 million in a Series B round from travel investors and entrepreneurial celebs. Its newly appointed CEO, Michael Wolf, walked Insider through the pitch deck he used to raise cash. "My existing investors had highlighted to me that the funding environment is the most difficult it's been in 20 years," Wolf told Insider. Wolf said hotels had been reaching out to ResortPass to get amenities such as flexible working space added to the app. Wolf walked Insider through the pitch deck he used to help raise the app's recent funding round below.

☆ One of the best bets in real estate is no longer a sure thing
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The sure thing that's no longer a sure thing. But the shine is starting to come off what is considered one of the safest, and smartest, bets in real estate. The two largest single-family rental REITs — Invitation Homes and American Homes for Rent — have recently seen their ratings downgraded by Wall Street analysts, Insider's Alex Nicoll reports. More on the potential deal, which also might have participation from a former Wall Street CEO. If you want to leave Wall Street but don't know where to start, read this.

☆ Wall Street's biggest landlords thought they had a great hedge against inflation. But now these giant homebuyers are getting slammed by rising costs — just like the rest of us.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-05 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Two Wall Street analysts are seeing warning signs for big landlords like Invitation Homes. Raymond James downgraded its rating of Invitation Homes for the first time ever. Single-family rental companies face new challengesHigh interest rates mean that it costs substantially more for single-family rental companies to buy up thousands of homes. In key markets like Texas, Florida, and Georgia, property taxes may increase by 20 to 30% year-over-year, according to Raymond James. According to Carl and Rosivach, Invitation Homes' rent collection rolls are 2% lower than they were pre-pandemic, while on-time payments are 5% lower than they were pre-pandemic.

☆ The SEC is suing real-estate mogul Kent Swig's shady crypto partner for perpetuating a 'pump-and-dump' scheme with a different gold-backed crypto currency
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Now the SEC is suing the CEO of Swig's company for an earlier, separate gold-backed crypto scam. According to the SEC, Braverman was said to be the chief operating officer of one of two companies the regulator targeted in the complaint. When Swig's company announced Digau, cryptocurrencies were on a sugar high, with bitcoin trading above $60,000. Neither Swig nor Dignity Gold would reveal to Business Insider any of the specific site locations where the company plans to mine. To extract the gold, Swig partnered with a mining company called Apache Mill Tailings.

☆ This entrepreneur is giving landlords and homeowners a chance to buy their own personal power plants. See the pitch deck he used to raise millions.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Enviro Power has built a boiler that turns excess heat into electricity and saves landlords cash. The boiler can be installed by regular HVAC technicians and is produced by a top industry brand. CEO Dan Nadav walked us through the pitch deck the firm is using to raise money right now. Its design, which wraps a steam-powered "power plant" around the boiler, is meant to be easy and simple for HVAC technicians to understand, install, and service. Nadav walked Insider through the pitch deck the firm is using now to raise funds to expand and roll out its operations.

☆ Meet 30 rising stars of real estate who are transforming the way homes are sold and offices get built at firms like Blackstone, Redfin, and CBRE
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Robert Davis | Dan Latu | Jordan Pandy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Meet Insider's third-annual slate of emerging talent in commercial and residential real estate. We selected 30 young professionals 35 and under whose leadership spans a vast industry. Insider has tried to capture the brightest of the bunch in our third-annual Rising Stars of Real Estate list. But real estate isn't all about making money. Presented in alphabetical order by last name, here are the rising stars of real estate for 2022.

☆ Office space is tougher than ever to rent out. See the pitch deck that raised $15 million to help landlords compete for demanding tenants.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-26 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

WiredScore certifies buildings' tech capabilities, like LEED does with environmental ratings. WiredScore CEO Arie Barendrecht walked Insider through the pitch deck he used to raise $15 million. In a world of remote work, potential office tenants have become pickier about their spaces. Generally speaking, prospective office tenants have little insight into what their office WiFi will look like. The company now also certifies technology in apartment buildings, the office of the remote worker.

☆ The CEO of a company that's purchased $7 billion in real estate expects competitors who've relied on cheap debt will get washed out
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

As borrowers' debt comes due, rising interest rates will cause defaults and sales. Defaults could cascade through the financial system, putting "trillions" of dollars at risk. After nearly 15 years of rock-bottom interest rates, financial markets — including real estate — are being weaned from easy money by Federal Reserve rate hikes, Benjamin Miller, the CEO, said. Suddenly, landlords might be on the hook for 20% or more of the total value of the property, and their interest rates will be at least double what they were. An even bigger risk to the financial system lies with interest-rate derivatives, or financial contracts used to mimic or bet against rate moves.

☆ Layoffs are crushing the real-estate industry, and Redfin and Opendoor are the latest victims. Here are 44 companies that have shed jobs due to the fast-cooling housing market.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Robert Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Redfin and Opendoor are the latest real-estate firms to lay off employees. The layoffs come as demand for mortgages has reached its lowest level since 1997.Insider rounded up 44 of the firms who have cut staff amid a cooling housing market. The layoffs at Redfin and Opendoor are the latest signs of trouble for the embattled real-estate industry. The downsizing began in the mortgage industry with Better's Zoom layoffs at the end of last year. With signs of distress spreading through the office market and among homebuilders, and rate hikes anticipated into 2023, layoffs are mounting.

☆ Online real-estate investment firm Fundrise is paying way over housing-market value for some build-to-rent communities. Here's why it says it's still a winning strategy.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Lisa Kailai Han | James Rodriguez | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

Build-to-rent communities skip the intermediary and go straight to the homebuilder. While typical single-family rental strategies, pioneered by Blackstone in the aftermath of the Great Recession, are inherently tied to the housing market, build-to-rent is not. In the eyes of private equity, there's no difference between build-to-rent communities and apartment blocks. If you value Cypress Bay as an apartment building, instead of a collection of homes, Fundrise got a good deal. Fundrise is still working on deals, Miller said, with a deal pipeline stretching out to 2025.

☆ Blackstone and Prologis turned warehouses from safe and boring investments into white-hot assets. Now they're battling to see who can own more.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Danielle Walker | Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

In other words, big money is buying up warehouse space as fast as smaller owners can sell. The coronavirus pandemic accelerated this change, with warehouse investment outpacing office investment in 2020 and 2021, according to CBRE. A Prologis warehouse in Ichikawa City, Japan. Prologis, Blackstone, and the rest of big money duke it outOther big-money investors have increasingly invested in warehouses. The UK's Segro once sold warehouse space to Blackstone — now it's acquiring its own warehouses for last-mile delivery that Blackstone might have otherwise picked up for itself.

☆ Battery startup salaries revealed: How much Redwood, QuantumScape, and more pay the engineers they're desperate to hire
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Alexa St. John | Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The EV battery space will need to fill 10 million jobs globally by 2030. Firms like Redwood Materials, QuantumScape, and more, are searching for hundreds of workers. Battery companies are desperate for talent to meet the demand they're seeing from electric vehicle automakers — and some are paying big bucks to attract workers. Battery companies are racing to get critical materials like lithium and nickel. This need means that firms innovating all aspects of the battery value chain — including battery chemistry, materials, battery health, repurposing and more — are competing with one another to fill what the World Economic Forum expects will be 10 million jobs globally by 2030.

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☆ How the Warehouse Boom Changed the Way America Looks, Lives, and Works
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

As the US emerged from the Great Recession, cheap real estate and the rise of e-commerce collided to create a warehousing boom. Now warehouse boomtowns shoot up in places like California's Inland Empire, Pennsylvania's Lehigh County, and Columbus, Ohio, and the number of warehouse workers has nearly tripled in a decade. Here, Insider explores how the rise of warehouses and warehouse work has changed the US and its citizens as we became a Warehouse Nation. A surge in warehouse workUsing data and on-the-ground reporting, Insider looked at the opportunities and hidden costs of the rise of warehouse work. Read more from 'Warehouse Nation'A look from Insider at how the warehouse boom has reshaped America.

☆ Landing cut roughly a third of its Alabama staff — but first the real estate startup had the laid-off workers train their cheaper, Mexico City-based replacements
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

The furnished-apartment rental company Landing laid off 110 employees last week. According to the company, it launched its Mexico operation in 2020, which has grown to include at least 100 employees. The two laid-off employees described training the Mexico City-based colleagues over Slack, Zoom, and the business-messaging application Intercom. However, two laid-off employees disagreed with this assessment and told Insider that while some employees had been moved into markets earlier this summer, they still required the help of a centralized operations team. "One of Bill's 10 business principles is to execute relentlessly," the laid-off employee said.

☆ Proptech startup founders and VCs dissect the overwhelming sense of doom about raising capital right now: 'Some folks are feeling that it's really, really bad'
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-12 | by ( Jordan Pandy | Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Founders fear the worst is yet to comeNaturally, proptech founders are worried. But proptech founders say they have additional concerns. Warburg Peters and other VCs who spoke with Insider encouraged founders to find partners beyond the investor offering the biggest check. Clelia Warburg Peters. Clelia Warburg Peters"In a funny way in 2021, they would just take the best check," Warburg Peters said of founders.

☆ Vista Equity Partners is exploring a deal to take Compass private, sources say
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-05 | by ( Ben Bergman | Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Vista Equity Partners is exploring taking the real-estate brokerage private, sources say. A Compass rep said "no private-equity firm has contacted Compass expressing any interest in taking the company private." Vista Equity Partners is exploring a deal to take the residential real-estate brokerage Compass private, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The chief technology officer Joseph Sirosh, who left Microsoft to run Compass' tech operations, was let go shortly after the call. Vista has taken numerous tech companies private this year, including an $8.4 billion deal for the tax-software company Avalara and a $16.4 billion deal for Citrix.

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