Work from home forever! Offices are dying! Zoom is the future!
Issue 2 - October 16th, 2020
The current "work from home forever" discussion raging on in the world today is completely overblown in my opinion. The pandemic has completely flipped the office culture on its head which I love to see, and when our society is in the midst of change most people assume the extreme case. In reality, we usually end up somewhere in the middle. I personally believe that "office life" should be more flexible, and I think we are headed towards a very impactful adoption of tools and workplace norms that will make employees happier in the long run. Companies will be more open to hybrid remote-work policies, creating office environments and spaces where people want to work, and hopefully doing away with time wasting meetings and bad real estate decisions.
Will work from home policies improve? Yes. Will Zoom replace the one-day 9 hour flying time back-and-forth business trip? Probably. Will conferences come back in person? Absolutely. People love conferences for the after hours meetings that take place where real work and connections happens. Will companies flee cities where policies are anti-business and bad for their employees? Absolutely.
In regards to the exodus of companies from certain cities, my opinion is that terrible local leadership and policy decisions are pushing companies away - not the pandemic specifically. Crisis creates opportunity and smart people take advantage of opportunities while no else is paying attention. A company can justify an entire HQ relocation and blame it on the pandemic when in reality they have been trying to justify for years a move to a new state or closing some of their physical real estate spaces. Each company has its own unique personal characteristics in their office culture, but the mass exodus from certain cities is purely based on poor leadership and local factors much more so than the pandemic unfolding in today's world.
“There are almost no tours. There’s almost no proposals. The deal activity has totally dried up.”
— Chris Roeder, head of JLL’s brokerage team in San Francisco, on office market decline
Cool Product
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Newsworthy Links To Share
Snapdocs raises $60M to manage the mortgage process in the cloud. Snapdocs, which is used by some 130,000 real estate professionals to digitally manage the mortgage process and other paperwork and stages related to buying a home, has raised $60 million in new equity funding on the heels of a few bullish months of business. Snapdocs is now on track to close 1.5 million deals this year, double its 2019 volume.
The Bumble Of Real Estate - A real estate app named Casa Blanca that aims to make shopping for homes like using a dating app launched recently in NYC. With Casa Blanca, buyers and renters alike simply create a profile and list their preferences, then swipe right or left on the prospective homes that come up. The app sorts the listings based on the given user’s criteria and gets smarter with each swipe. Also like a dating app, Casa Blanca organizes the listings based on location, saves the ones that users swiped right on and hides the rest.
Casai - a Mexico City-based short-term rental platform, raised $23 million in Series A funding. The idea behind Casai is that travelers get luxury amenities, locally sourced designs for apartments, and high-tech features throughout the unit, such as keyless check in and smart home devices. Casai doesn’t own the units, but makes arrangements with landlords (often revenue-sharing models), and the units are exclusive to Casai.
Macy's has converted 2 of its department stores into shipping fulfillment centers and ended in-store shopping. Is this the future of big box stores?
Notarize inks major deal with Adobe. Notarize is an online notary service which I have used personally and love their product. This is a big step forward for the future of all digital closings on home purchases, refinances, and more.