Episode 1: Real Estate Tech 3.0 - Opportunities and Disruptions in COVID reality

Harvard Real Estate Review

PropTech has been the buzzword in the real estate industry for the past few years. People are looking for ways to disrupt this traditional industry whether through revolutionizing ways of living, changing mode of operation, or coming up with new models of investments. Post the 2008 financial crisis, disruptions now known as Housing and Homebuilding 2.0 - such as prefabrication, 3D printing, and smart home - came to the forefront of the industry. As people always say, with crises and challenges comes opportunities. Since the COVID pandemic, willingly or unwillingly, our social norm and way of living is changing faster than ever. In this episode, we will take a closer look at the macroscopic housing and real estate trends and how investors and businesses adapt to these changes.

This episode features a cross-disciplinary conversation between the following panelists and experts:

· Chris Herbert (Managing Director at the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies)

· David Gerster (VP and Investor at JLL Spark Venture Fund)

· Nicholas Donahue, (CEO and Founder at Atmos)

The conversation was moderated by Iryna Papalamava (MBA’18), previously a Director and Principal at Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures (BCGDV), and currently a Chief Operating Officer at Guardian Direct. This podcast series emerged out of her article entitled “Picking Winners and Losers in PropTech,” a comprehensive guide for investing in real estate tech published in HRER Issue #8.

The HRER podcast series is produced by Dixi Wu (MArch / MDes REBE ’22) and George Zhang (MArch ’21), Editors Emeriti of the Harvard Real Estate Review and Executive Editors of HRER #8.