Delivery On Demand

Issue 37 - June 18th, 2021

Americans love convenience, and we love to get things delivered to our homes. The pandemic accelerated at-home delivery trends by factors of 10 and these trends will continue to gain steam as we roll forward this year. Pandemic aside, we were always a country of pizza ordering and Amazon obsessed citizens. Now, you can have pretty much anything you could ever need delivered to your home without even walking out of the door. With all of this innovation in delivery convenience with everything from groceries to specialty items and everything in between, we need to see more innovation on the receiving end of the delivery equation with gadgets and products designed for the home, apartment complexes, and offices.

Incredible innovation will occur in the delivery-on-demand industry in the coming years, and a number of companies will launch products that make the delivery process smoother for drivers and the customers receiving their items. Here are some ideas that are starting to take hold today, and I am excited to see what continues to be launched in the coming years:

1. Residential cardboard recycling company that picks up boxes to re-use them locally or repurpose them for companies like Amazon, FedEx, & UPS.

2. Amazon Locker-like systems for package deliveries at apartment complexes.

3. Refrigerated grocery delivery boxes for Instacart deliveries. Instacart should create something like this and give them away to customers for free insuring thousands of dedicated people who would be a brand loyalist indefinitely to their company.

4. Delivery drone landing pads in your front yard for things like the El Pollo Loco food delivery drone already being tested in Costa Mesa,CA.

5. Smart mailboxes that alert you when the mail has been delivered or a package has been placed in your mailbox.

6. Package rooms built into homes where a delivery driver could obtain a code from the homeowner prior to delivery.

What other ideas do you think will become standard household gadgets and home design trends over the next decade?

Newsworthy Links To Share

1. Zillow launches significant upgrades to its Zestimate® home valuation model.  The changes allow the algorithm to react more quickly to current market trends and improve the national median error rate to 6.9% -- an improvement of nearly a full percentage point for more than 104 million off-market homes. (PR Newswire)

2. Home services platform Thumbtack raises $275M on a $3.2B valuation to double down on home management (TechCrunch) and more info on Medium (Medium).

3. May housing starts come in below consensus and new home building permits decline. (Seeking Alpha)

4. Seven years after its founding, Opendoor has finally reached a 100,000-transaction milestone, the company announced Tuesday. To celebrate, Opendoor announced its expansion into six new markets — the largest collection of markets the iBuying giant has launched at one time. (Inman)

5. President Biden’s tax proposal that puts 1031 exchanges on the chopping block is shining a spotlight on UPREITs as an alternative strategy to defer capital gains taxes. (WealthManagement.com)

6. Construction of new housing in the past 20 years fell 5.5 million units short of long-term historical levels, according to a new National Association of Realtors report, which is calling for a “once-in-a-generation” policy response. (WSJ)

7. Seattle startup Arrived Homes raised $10 million in equity and $27 million in debt financing to help scale its tech-infused real estate model that lets people invest in single-family rental homes for as little as $100. (GeekWire)

8. PROPERTY HIGHLIGHT: Aspen, CO Mansion sells For $72 million setting an all time record for the town.

   A Red Mountain home and guesthouse sold for $72.5 million on Tuesday, making it the most expensive real estate transaction in Pitkin County history, according to records in the Multiple Listing Service.

   The property was purchased by Patrick Dovigi, a Canadian who was a former professional hockey player who is now founder, president and CEO of Green for Life Environmental, a North American waste management company worth an estimated $6.1 billion. 

   The home, at 419 Willoughby Way, encompasses 21,477 square feet with nine bedrooms and 13 bathrooms on 4.5 acres, according to the Pitkin County Assessor website. It was built in 2006 and designed by Charles Cunniffe Architects. (Aspen Daily News)