Michael Davidson: Curating the Employee Experience

Through a truly unique perspective, Davidson takes us back through time to examine the fundamentals of human need and the earliest human disruptions.

Disruption is nothing new, it is as old as we are. As soon as human beings evolved from primates to homosapiens, and realized they needed shelter from the elements, to eat, to breathe, to protect each other, they have been disrupting themselves ever since.

Disruption was based on the needs of the humans at that time but today, humans are the same….how do we measure ourselves? By what we’re building.

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Michael Davidson, Head of Global Corporate Real Estate, Managing Director, J.P. Morgan

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Michael Davidson, I am with JP Morgan Chase and have been for nine years and I lead JP Morgan's global corporate real estate portfolio across Asia, EMEA, Latin America, and North America. So today we're going to talk about corporate real estate and disruption. But before we get to your 2019 I want to go back in time, all the way back in time because this notion of disruption is nothing new disruption is as old as we are the universe the earth by the way was created a pretty big disruption.

As soon as human beings evolved from primates to homo sapiens and realized that they needed shelter from the elements and to eat and to breed and protect one another, they've been disrupting themselves ever since. In 2019 and going forward is just the latest incarnation in our lifetime. In the ancient world the Great Pyramid of Giza or the lighthouse and Alexandria. In the modern ancient world you had the Taj Mahal or Machu Picchu by the way if you look at the wonders of the world and one of the great benchmarks for how humans rate themselves in terms of their progress it's all stuff that we built with technology stones and architecture and thought and one of the things that makes that common to what we're doing today is that all of the great wonders of the world had a purpose and they were tethered to a culture and they were based on the needs of human beings in that society at that moment in time.

Now let's go to 2019 and we have the benefit of having experienced the 20th century and now the 21st century humans are the same. How do we measure ourselves by what we're building? Only now we have steel and glass and we build towers and we go as high as we can possibly build them. We impress ourselves with these monuments and they are monumental. If you go to any city around the world, what are you impressed by first the skyline. When you go to the souvenir shop what do they have, little statues of buildings that were built that you think of a city you think of the Eiffel Tower you think of the Space Needle in Seattle you think of the Colosseum in Rome you think about what we built.

So if you look at this your vision and architecture and engineering and technology. But is it a curated experience? Like what's it like to live inside of these structures. It's great to look at,from afar. It's great at night when they're lit up but if you're one of the three or four or five or six or seven or ten thousand people that go and work in these buildings every day. What's that experience like. Is it is nice is looking at it from afar. JP Morgan is on the cusp of doing it once again.

We are taking down to 70 Park Avenue which was in the Times last year to build a new tower one that is thoughtful one that has core and shell and look and feel and all of the pedigree that you would imagine with a 21st century office tower. We are going through this exercise now but the fundamentals are very much the same, which we'll get to.

We've built spaces year after year after year and we've hired the best architects and the best thinkers and the best amenities experts and we've engaged H.R. and we've tracked our headcount and we've created spaces spaces that are modern that bring people together to eat to think to learn to collaborate that don't feel like a bank. It feels like a place you'd want to sit and talk to someone.

All of these are examples of spaces there's no need to call out where they're built. It's fairly ubiquitous in terms of how we approach our real estate globally also because our employees are global so that what you build in Singapore or New York or Dallas or San Francisco people travel and if you're not building like for like and you're not consistent they'll call you out on it.

We're very consistent in terms of our design palette. Now, if you're an occupant and one of our spaces or in any space anywhere and if you really add up and account for all of the things that define your experience as an occupant, coming to work every day. What's your experience like? all of the things we could have named more but we ran out of space on the slide but we think we made the point is it curated or confusing. One of the things that happens is that although we lead real estate we don't lead all the things that impact your experience.

We don't lead security, that's among your first experiences whether you can get into the building does your card work. We don't run amenities, food pantries, technology, wellness centers we integrate them in real estate but we don't run these functions. So through the years occupants and different companies occupying remarkable structures probably felt like they're looking at oncoming traffic rather than like in a curated workplace experience. Because all of these things were happening if they were synchronized, it was almost luck or it was because people were really good partners within a firm. But this is often what happens and what happens on the inside.

I can tell you that every one of these emojis in my 25 year career I have experienced every one of those emojis and many more in the occupants that I've served. You get the entire spectrum depending on what people's needs are how they feel how you're delivering it and how you're integrating the myriad of things that actually impact a person's day or a moment in the spaces you create.

One of the things that happens or is happening in the 21st century is that one of the solutions as well is just fill the space with technology to really disrupt ii and if we load the space with technology well people will love it. They'll be connected and they can use their devices and they won't need to get together as much. So there are two problems with this. One problem is that when technology is installed people don't often know how to use it. How many conference calls or telepresence on Cisco have I been in meetings internally and externally where you have eight smart people around a table saying how do you like dial n. It should be intuitive but it's not always intuitive. Is there a wireless signal. Oh wait. I'm from an outside company my laptop doesn't work. Sometimes the technology is not as intuitive as it should be.

The second thing that we're learning and we're learning this much more slowly, not just at a corporate level but at a societal level is that we're more connected than ever and yet we're lonely. Why I'm connected to my friends all over the world via social media. They can say hello to me and share pictures. Why are kids lonely. Why do we get notices from colleges and universities that say that anxiety and depression are on the rise? because there's a fundamental human need for connection and it isn't via wires or screens it's in person, something that's never changed all the way back to the ancient times to now is that people need each other.

When our businesses come to us now to develop new spaces it's interesting that among the first things they say to us after technology is we need spaces to get together in person to innovate. Innovation Labs collaboration spaces smart rooms where we can physically come together even though we can do it with technology remotely we need a room where we can physically be present. That's where the innovation actually happens.

So you have to be aware that you don't try to solve the previous slide all of the different inputs by saying well let's just kick it out with technology and it'll be fine, It won't be fine. So let's go all the way back in time again and let's talk about fundamentals, fundamentals that were true in the ancient times and every century sense. These are the things that within JP Morgan we are evangelizing over and over again is how we treat one another.

Is that one of the primal parts of the experience that we have no matter how nice your workplace, how beautiful building it is, how far into the sky you are sitting, because we were able to build it that high, is that if you're not treated with dignity and respect by the people you are spending time with, your experience will not be good; if it's not fair. If these are not exercise if there is not empathy and accountability integrity and respect and diversity and trust, well no matter what space you're in wherever you are in the world you're not going to have a great experience.

So corporate real estate, we are disrupting it and it. It’s being disrupted but just like every other object in space has been built by mankind since the beginning of time, if you disrupt corporate real estate without purpose, purpose equals plan equals strategy equals thought,without values without culture without humanity and honoring and genuflecting to the inherent human needs for the people that are going to occupy your space, well then your disruption is just going to be disrupting and nothing else.

If you use these as pillars, if you build your disruption upon these pillars as a grounding well then what happens is that the disruption becomes a transformation and why is it a transformation? Because you're creating an experience that attracts and retains people. So when you attract and retain people this is arithmetic. If you attract and retain them that means they start to build relationships and when they start to build relationships they start to trust each other and hang out more and when they do that they talk more and when they talk more they start to share ideas and open up with each other.

Then they start to innovate and then the real disruption starts to happen. The constructive disruption the moving forward progressive disruption that impacts the person the team the organization the industry and even society itself.

Thank you very much.

Gary Chance

January 15, 2020

Amenities, CoWorking, Design, Workplace as a Service, Tenant Engagement, People Tracking

Vik Aggarwal: Diversifying Your Real Estate Portfolio Strategy

Gary Chance

January 15, 2020

Amenities, CoWorking, Design, Workplace as a Service, Tenant Engagement, People Tracking

Vik Aggarwal, Global Head of Enterprise for Knotel discusses diversification of commercial real estate portfolio strategy. What you need to know about flexible office space, hybrid real estate model & more.

VIEW PRESENTATION:

Vik Aggarwal, Global Head of Enterprise, Knotel

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

We are going to talk a little bit about Knotel but this is not a sales pitch. This is about how we approach portfolio strategy. So, for those that don't know me my name is Vik Agarwal, I run enterprise for Knotel.

I’ve been here for about seven months, prior to that I was number two for global real estate for AECOM out in L.A.. Prior to that I ran global real estate strategy for American Express. and prior to that I had CFO role and portfolio strategy roles at BlackRock, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan Chase. So what we're going to talk about today is how you diversify your real estate portfolio.

A lot of that comes down to using flexibility. Harvard Business Review put a quote out about how important flexibility is to a portfolio. Now this is nothing new for any corporate real estate executive, we've been trying to do this forever. Take a traditional lease you know, talk to the landlord, get me my termination rights sure for our expansion rights all these different things but they will come at a cost. And still you exercise a termination clause you're going to pay on unamortized TI’s, you're gonna pay unamortized commissions, you have asset write off. It's a huge financial pain that you take on the P&L cash flow and balance sheet.

So yeah there are some advantages to taking a direct lease. Some of these are long term stability, you have more control of the space of a direct ownership relationship. You have the ability to advertise your assets that you own over a period of a longer period of time and you can really control your privacy your I.T. your security as you enter the space. Now flexible workspace is something that's new and it's a new tool that's in people's tool belts.

Now Knotel is not and why use flexible workspaces that we are not coworking. So a company that does enterprise grade does not want two seats, three seats sitting next to random strangers. They need to have their privacy. Some of their employees maybe we're using P.I. data, social security numbers, you know this is a lot of intangible risk and tangible risk around having a transient crowd working with your employees.

As you think about flexible workplace there's a lot of different ways to use flexible. Your company may have gone through an M&A and maybe divesting a company, it may need swing space, a line of business may need to work differently. Your CEO may have said I need three hundred seats tomorrow and that becomes your oh shit moment right. That you need to go and solve and you've got to be the superhero. So the benefits of flexible is that you don't have to do occupancy. So U.S. gap as you a straight line your rent as soon as you take possession of the keys which is a drag on earnings; CFO’s don't like that, that goes away.

You don't have disposition costs in the future. So say your headcount balloons say it reduces by 50 percent, you don't have to go worry about disposition of the space and sub leasing it. You don't spend capital? you are basically converting capital to opp X so that frees up your free cash flow for a company that allows them to go buy things with their cash and use their balance sheet for some things more creative to earnings. If you can have a fully serviced office experience which has IT, design workplace strategy, you don't have to give up some of the stuff I said in the traditional lease about the IT you get find the right provider, they can even hand you the fiber optic wire and walk away.

Everyone's headcount fluctuates. There is a Boston consulting analysis that says 41 percent of the companies interviewed said their headcount projections were wrong by 100 percent. This is not new to anyone right, so if you think about that that's a huge drain. Real estate is the second largest expense for a company so getting it wrong has huge financial consequences.

So why go long in space when the word future inherently means uncertainty and you have the ability to have a fully tailored office that matches your space standards and branding experience, use a certain type of stand desks across the world we can match that. You know Michael talked about whether you go to Portugal or London or D.C. or LA they want to have the same experience as people travel. You can still have that when you work with a flexible office provider that is global in scale.

There's a mix between this now too.

So some companies are saying you know what I know what my base headcount is going to be is never gonna change but I do when projects and I do lose projects. So I need the capability to fluctuate up and down based on future needs, so that's what I call the hybrid model. The hybrid model is basically that you can add flexibility to transaction level. So a company like Knotel and this is something we've actually done in London is a company who said that they wanted space and go long, but they want to be in the whole building but they don't want to have the whole building today.

So what do you do, you reach out to a flexible service provider like ourselves. We took down the rest of the building and they took a floor day one so they can contract down. Then they also have call options, first refusals to go long in that space is adding true flexibility at the transaction level and choose scalability. So you're not bifurcating that a second third fourth building or have future disposition risk.

One of the concepts I want to talk about and this is a metric that every company uses which is net present value to determine what's the best way to make a decision. Building A verse Building B, Time Value of Money. Time Value of Money tell us your dollar today is worth more than your dollar tomorrow. But there's a flaw. It doesn't tell you whether the decision was right day2. It doesn't tell you whether you're spending good money after bad money. So there's a reverse concept of that called the money value of time. So if there is a way to create a structure where you're spending a few percent more to not have to make a decision that's valuable.

What keeps people up at night, I went too long in space, I went too short in space, my CFO doesn't want to spend the capital of a fully depreciated asset, I don't want to have dual occupancy have a bubble period. All these things that show you as a real estate professionals like this a no brainer we should be doing it. These keep other people up at night as disposition risk, asset write offs. If you have a capability to scale up your headcount or scale down the headcount because you're flexible workplace you're not spending capital we don't do occupancy that really transforms the scalability and your ability to do portfolio optimization on a real time basis.

You've heard a lot about what exposure a landlord wants to have in a building. People talk 15, 20 percent of that space should be flexible. But for a corporate real estate executive, what is the right mix. People want to have metrics. Everyone has KPI’s. Well, every business is different. So you have office vacancy rates that are different by market and by industry and most companies say you know what I want to have 10 percent vacancy so I want to restock the whole building.

But then you have on top of that not everyone comes to the office every day. Yes you solve that through heads to seats ratios. You look at badge swipe data but the truth of the matter is people travel. People take vacations, people take holidays, things happen.

The short answer to that right is that there's really no answer to that. You really have to look at your business and say by market, by business unit what is the right metric that I want to have. And you start implementing that based off of that. Flexibility is the most important thing that company can add to the portfolio because it really allows them to have scalability upwards and downwards for their second largest expense for the company

Mariel Ebrahimi

July 10, 2019

Amenities, CoWorking, Design, Workplace as a Service, Tenant Engagement, Smart Buildings

Joe Du Bey: The Experience Era - Sweeping Major Industries in the US

Mariel Ebrahimi

July 10, 2019

Amenities, CoWorking, Design, Workplace as a Service, Tenant Engagement, Smart Buildings

Joe Du Bey, CEO of Eden helps navigate The Experience Era and how the nature of experiences are transforming industries across the US. This talk showcases how different demographics of people value experiences and how that value is fundamentally shifting the business of entire industries. With real estate taking center stage, Du Bey brings forth examples from industries such as fitness, music, retail, coffee, enterprise offices & more.

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Joe Du Bey, CEO, Eden

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hey my name is Joe Du Bey and I'm going to talk today about the experience era and how it's affecting commercial real estate. So what is the experience era? The main thing to take away is that the world is changing. It went from before being where it was something that you know you served any one industry and maybe sold a specific product and service. Today we're all actually in the experience business to think about commercial real estate today versus what's going to happen. It's a largely offline world. And that's it's something that is focused on the space and less on the people and the experience of them.

And that's something that's about to dramatically change. So what is causing the experience era in one word millennials today. Millennials are the biggest cohort of any population. This is a really substantial shift. And this is something that is affecting the preferences of the workforce itself. And the reason why that's so is because millennials are different. They actually value experiences over products. And this is a critical thing to understand once this is grasped. It all starts to make sense.

But the majority of one else would rather spend money on an experience than a thing. They're wired differently even when it comes to work. The majority of millennials would take less money. If they're able to have a better experience at the office if they felt the experience reflected themselves. In contrast in case you don't think that's different. Only 9 percent of baby boomers would do the same. They are wired a bit differently and we need to adjust to their preferences. So what makes something fit the experience area we've discovered there are six hallmarks to this new time.

Specifically you can see involves enabling technology. It's at least made more efficient through technology. Any one of the major experiences that consumers in enterprises are going through in the experience area users are empowered they have voice they're able to customize their experience. This is critical. It shows up in amenities. It shows up in services inexperience error people care about community and they're building community around these experiences that were previously about a service or product. It's really the community that wrap around it. Things have meaning. It's not just about the coffee for instance it's about why it's ethical inexperience era quality matters a lot especially because these millennials are investing in the experience so it makes sense that their since they're shifting money to that they'll care more about the quality of it.

And the last thing is design inexperience error. You'll notice that if it starts to feel to you like more and more things look like the inside of an Apple store it's because more more things do look like the inside of an Apple store. Millennials care a lot about design and it's showing up everywhere. So let's talk about a few industries and how they've been transformed already in the US. There's the music scene if you remember from 20 years ago when you show up to a concert there were a few people playing music and that's what a concert was. Now when you go to a music event it's really much more about the experience. You walk in and it's a crowd of people who are seeking like minded folks.

It's immersive. There are lights there's artisanal food. Yes someone's playing music somewhere but that's not actually the primary thing. You might take away from being at a music event these days and is popping up across the US. Now let's talk about retail. When you used to go to a mattress store it was a roomful of bunch of mattresses. Now you go in and it's actually limited minority might be a mattress. We're walking into is a place that's beautifully designed full of narrative really speaks to millennials. When you used to walk to a gym it was a place full of heavy weights. Now it's if you walk just like Soul Cycle what Barry's Bootcamp.

It's a group of people who are building community. They might feel even you might send something almost religious around the dedication to this specific group. This room and it's beautifully designed. If you think about consumer coffee it's again something where you know it's the kind of thing where people use to go and literally just get coffee from a diner. Now it's a beautifully designed room. Starbucks even calls itself your third place. Recognizing that there is a different kind of feeling that comes in to a coffee shop today and now you can start to see it in commercial real estate just that just starting to.

And that's something because in the past it was really a place where you got work done. If you look at this market leaders Historical Office now with Google there's a climbing wall. They care about customization choice services and they know this is critical for them to actually hire the very best talent. And what is an overheated talent war. The thing to keep in mind is that 99 percent of commercial real estate is offline. This is just starting to happen. And over the next couple of years you'll feel this in a really big way. This beginning it's experience matters because in the first couple of years whenever there's a tectonic shift those who adapt early those are the ones who get to have outsized influence and kind of pain in the future whereas we fast forward or in five years.

The folks who haven't become the laggards they're the ones who threaten the actual performance of whatever their underlying asset is. How will this change commercial real estate. What tactically do you need to do to enter the experience era. Well specifically think about your building across a bunch different dimensions. A big primary one is how do you think about lease terms. It's something where in the future people want to have duration of lease that reflects their actual needs which isn't decreasingly two to 10 years and much more let's say nimble outside of that space controls today it's something where people have almost no control almost no voice that is changing rapidly through technology email to enter from from accessing the building itself to requesting services.

You can now actually have control over almost anything. Tenant feedback historically ignored with a landlord or building and you're really thinking of it places us as a space as opposed to thinking of the people inside of it as customers in the future and experience first building. It actually solicits feedback. It cares how its customers are doing outside of that the brand of the building itself. This is something that's critical in the past people might not even know really what kind of building they're in who the owner is who's managing it. The future is a much more white labeled experience where the building itself has a brand that people care about outside of that something that's really critical is what do you provide in terms of services.

In the past nothing going forward amenity rich people should be able to get any kind of service they want from food to any sort of wellness and like yoga or whatever they might want they need to be able to access through their building. And the final one community. Right now buildings are a missed opportunity everyone in it could feel something. It could build loyalty. Instead today it's mostly a box that has no connectivity the experience era has arrived and there's no turning back at this point.

Over the next couple of years everything will change. Commercial real estate and it will no longer be about the space it's providing an experience with space attached. Eden is ushering that in for all of the commercial key stakeholders from the occupiers and the companies to the landlords and the property managers and we're enabling you to provide an experience first building for your tenants

Gary Chance

December 12, 2018

Amenities

Mayank Agrawal: Finding Your Zen In A Noisy World

Gary Chance

December 12, 2018

Amenities

Finding a quiet, comfortable and private technology enabled workspace on the go is no easy feat. Zenspace CEO Mayank Agrawal discuss the challenges of finding your zen in a noisy world and introduces concepts to help solve this problem, as well as maximizing use of underutilized space.

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Mayank Agrawal, Founder & CEO, Zenspace

This video was filmed at a Peerspace, the leading online marketplace for meeting and event spaces. Click here to Learn More.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone My name is Mayank Agrawal. I'm the founder and CEO of Zenspace. Today I want to talk about finding your zen in a noisy world. Zen to us stands for that quite, private comfortable moment that you need to conduct your business. It's the place where you can actually go and meet someone, take a video conference call or just focus on what you are doing but without the distraction of noise. Building on that, I'm gonna establish in this presentation through statistics, why is this a big need at this point in time. I will also talk about the lack of quietness or like lack of Zen spaces in public spaces like airports and conventions. I will also talk about what is Zenspace doing to address that need.

This was my life last ten years, working in a technology sales for last almost a decade. I used to go to conventions almost every quarter and now after 3 o'clock when I'm tired my legs give up this is what I used to do, find a little quiet little space where I can sit and do some work. I used to take my conference calls with my boss who wants to do a sales review when I'm traveling inside a car by turning on my hotspot and also at the airport. As you can see I mean whenever I travel I mean I have two hours waiting for the next United flight. Even at the open office layouts it's very interesting in the last decade. We talked about that the offices should be more open. There should be more collaboration and open office layout became the cool thing. But it's a paradox, suddenly the new research and new studies from Harvard and from many of the big magazines they are actually talking about the lack of privacy in open offices.

But what can the facility managers do now that they have invested billions and billions of dollars to set up those open open offices but there is a lack of privacy for taking a phone call taking a even topic to a remote workers which are outside the country switching onto some staggering numbers and some statistics which are my favorite while doing research for Zenspace. We came across this number - Global Business Travel in 2017 alone was $1.33 trillion. It's been growing at a rate of 5 percent on an average for the last seven years after we came out of the big dip. And it's growing faster than ever. By 2022 it will hit $1.7 trillion almost the size of a big country. On the other hand. Flexible work space is growing. We all know what is the valuation of we work today. We all know workspace as a service is actually evolving. How can you actually refactor your space so it's flexible is reusable? It's not an office space where you have a permanent office but it's reusable by another other companies simultaneously.

That's what flexible work space is all about. JLL did research as in 2017 five percent of the work space has already been converted into flexible thanks to companies like Regus and WeWork the trend will continue and it will become 30 percent in future. We are talking about trillions of dollars of commercial real estate here. The third number which I would like to establish is remote workers in North America 40 percent of employed Americans last year alone work either in part time or full time outside their offices, remote workers. 3.9 million employed Americans work full time outside their office. They did not have dedicated offices and these are freelancers consultants. These are photographers, videographers, architects, these are sales executive, C-level executives of large companies. We call them digital nomads. Digital nomads are those people who don't have a dedicated office but they work outside. And how do the work is what we are trying to address at Zenspace. Most of the time you have some privacy and quietness there. But when they go out in coffee shops and conventions and airports that's where the big problem is.

There is space. Space is not a problem, we talk about real estate being prime. We talk about you know, how can we actually create more space out of space? There is space out there, and we actually did this while setting up Zenspace. We did research of top 10 airports and convention centers across the world, and staggeringly, 40 percent of that space is underutilized. When I call them underutilized, they look like this. They’re the the lobby, the patios, the hallways. Las Vegas commercial center as you know, the convention capital of the world, where you have consumer electronics show and shows like anybody, 4 million square feet 2.2 million square feet of which is actually exhibit halls and we're just the remaining of that is hallways lobbies and bodies. What do you do there actually? What can we do to convert those spaces? What can we do to convert those spaces without a huge transformational construction cost? What can we do to convert them into private workspaces?

We actually combined three experiences. We started with the on demand ubiquity aspects of Uber that my care is available within five minutes of me pushing that button. Wherever I am. Then the concept of WeWork which is workspace as a service. Workspace as a service meaning, how can you you reuse the existing space and share it with people? One of my favorites is Starbucks. The consistency of experience attribute which comes from Starbucks. When I'm outside of my home and office and I don't know where to go. I search for Starbucks. I search for Starbucks because I know that there is a Starbucks within 15 minutes of wherever I am. I also know that I will get free Wi-Fi, I also know the coffee I want to order and I have my space there so that to me is my Zenspace until we have enough Zenspaces and that's the consistency of experience, that consistency and guaranteed experience is very important. Uber does not offer that vehicle does that but it's not pervasive enough. Starbucks is pervasive. We combine those in our product called Zen Pod.

What is a Zen Pod? Zen Pod is quite comfortable and private technology enabled workspace which can be set up and as small as 10 square feet the size of a phone booth. And we have three different form factors for one person to person and four person and can be can be set up in less than two hours. Costs are really less than half of what you would spend on construction of a room and they are private, there are tech enabled that can be operated with a mobile app. You can actually download the Zenspace app and book that little room for yourself, pay for it and open the door yourself. It also offers a huge opportunity for generating revenue out of underutilized spaces. Through micro leasing and advertising it’s a big source of revenue. These are some visuals of how a looks like we play is what we have on offer boards upcoming in fairly large shopping mall in San Francisco where we are doing a pilot one of our parts has been placed in a coworking space as you can see here and we the biggest success we actually see and biggest need, we talked about conventions and this is where actually where we had this in one of the big events in Las Vegas. This is hard to find. The Zen moment is hard to find. And so we exist to solve the business traveler and remote workers problem. That's about Zenspace. Thank you so much.

Gary Chance

November 2, 2018

New Revenue, Amenities

David Sullivan: Solving Rental Evictions

Gary Chance

November 2, 2018

New Revenue, Amenities

David Sullivan, CEO of Till illustrates why tenant evictions occur and the myth of landlord “late-fee revenue.”

VIEW PRESENTATION:

David Sullivan, CEO, Till

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

My name's David Sullivan, I'm the CEO and Founder of Till. I'm here to talk today about why evictions suck. The underlying problem that creates eviction risk on our portfolios and how we can use innovative financial products to improve both the residents lives and ability to pay rent but also your portfolio's performance.

So each year 900,000 evictions occur. Many more occur in the shadows and we as landlords use different tax to get residents out of our portfolios who aren't paying rent. So why do evictions occur? Well the Rent Is too damn high, we've all heard that story and that's true. Affordability challenges are affecting all of us as landlords in finding residents who have the right ability to pay rent. We have serial skippers and professional residents who squat. We've all faced in battle those. But more importantly I believe that the cash flow challenges within our resident base. Drive almost all of the evictions and default we see in our portfolios and place eviction risk on an even broader set of residents.

So let's go down another level. Why do our residents face eviction challenges and cash flow risk? Well we have median household income of about forty five thousand dollars and that is really representative of stats that we all know. We've had stagnant wage growth with rising costs rent being the primary cost that we replace on the resident base. In a similar demographic, half of Americans see 25 percent month to month income volatility. Our resident bases are working multiple jobs, they're paid hourly, they're part of the gig economy. This makes their ability to budget and to pay rent challenging.

Most people in the country also have limited savings. Half of the country has less than four hundred dollars in accessible savings to actually weather a financial event Then finally we as landlords are placing a constraint on the resident base ourselves. We're putting a cash timing constraint by charging rent on the first of the month which makes it hard for the resident who is having to pay 30 to 50 percent of their income to us as landlords on that day.

So okay if a resident can't pay rent, what do they do? What current options exist? We have the family bank, family and friends, asking mom and dad or cousins or relatives for help. That works but people are embarrassed to do it and the capital base is inherently limited. We have banks real banks. The reality is many of our residents, especially in the workforce housing space, are under banked. They have limited access to the right capital and credit solutions that can stabilize their financial ability and means to pay rent on time.

We have new online peer to peer banks popping up, these are offering more personalized lending solutions that can help solve this problem but many have principal requirements that are above what the resident actually needs. We have payday and title lenders. These are real. Many of our residents are using payday and title loans to finance rent payday and title loans are giving their residents two to four weeks to pay them back and charging them three to 700 percent APR’s. As a side note, there are three times as many payday lenders sitting in our rental communities as there are McDonald's in the country. So they are a very real capital source for our resident base. And what's what the worst part is about are residents using them as a credit solution is that they are increasing the long term default risk on the resident base. The average payday loan will be refinanced eight times. And once that borrower is hitting that eighth borrowing cycle they are likely in default to both the payday lender and to use the landlord.

Finally, I want to highlight the landlord us. We are landlords. We as landlords offer credit to our consumer base our residents but it is not a effective credit. We do this in two ways. We have payment plans. We have a good resident they'd been with us for a few years and they hit a cash timing problem. We give them a payment plan because we don't want to lose them and we understand the cost of the eviction.

But more prevalent is the second form of financing we're offering them. We're giving residents a form of financing called a late fee. The late fee in most jurisdictions is 5 to 10 percent of rent for that month and we usually give them two weeks to pay. So what happens if they don't pay? We then file eviction and charge them eviction fees and them if they don't pay that we put them on the street. So let's just look at the initially late fee. The initial late fee is let's say 10 percent and we give them two weeks. That is a over 200 percent APR and we are not giving the resident any adequate time to solve the problem that they're facing.

Fair housing makes custom rental payment solutions challenging. And we as landlords are under resourced to deliver this type of credit. We are not re underwriting them. We can't read underwrite them. We don't actually know what the residents credit risk is at this point of need.

So I want to dispel a myth that I hear all the time from our landlord partners and people that we work with. So I talked all the time to landlords and they say well, we like our late fee revenue. I want to challenge that. Late fee revenue is a lost center. At best, it is a breakeven value proposition. I want to quickly talk you through why I believe that and why we as landlords are really bad at delivering credit.

We as landlords look at our income statements and there is an explicit line that says late fee revenue that makes us feel good. I ran a portfolio that had 1 million dollars in annual leave fee revenue that made me feel good. Well some residents might not pay but we made a million dollars. That is not true. We pulled it apart and the challenge in understanding late fee revenue is understanding the costs that drive and are associated with the doing quinsy and the collection effort. I challenge you to go look at your portfolios and actually pull apart these costs to see whether you're making money. And I would hands down bet that you are not. The challenge is we have five different items sitting in three different sections of our income statement. They create a loss center. We have bad debt that's easily tracked it sits in revenue. We have excess vacancy due to longer turnover for an eviction than a regular turnover. That also sits in revenue but it's harder to understand. We have our collection teams costs we have an eviction filing cost hidden in property management expenses. We then have materials and labor to turn a turn over. We all know our evictions cost us more. We have materials and labor to turn on eviction. Turnover beyond a normal turnover that are hidden somewhere. Ideally we shove them into Cap X but are also hidden in turnover and maintenance costs. The portfolio I was running I did this exercise a million dollars in annual revenue off late fees. We were spending one point four million dollars on those items we were losing 400,000 dollars a year charging our residents over 200 percent APR is giving them two weeks to pay us back and still evicting many of them.

The worst part is the resident is the biggest loser in this equation.

So even if they aren't evicted they face the stress of eviction month to month. But the ones that are evicted we are damaging their confidence, we are destroying their credit scores and we're destroying their ability to find housing in the future. Many families who are evicted are forced into transitional housing with family or friends homeless shelters or hotels, children are ripped out of schools and there's just an overall loss of community. Parents who are the breadwinners of these families who face the cash instability or the cash uncertainty, are then distanced from their job opportunities making it harder for them to actually earn income to rent a home from us again.

I want to talk about two solutions. We have a suite of financial products that we're delivering into and specifically designed for the multifamily and single family rental housing industries. We have a core rental loan that is meant to weather a financial emergency. It is a three to six month loan. We underwrite the resident on their ability to pay. We want to make sure that they have the ability to pay us back and the ability to pay you as a landlord in the future. We partner with landlords to deliver this product is a B2B to see model. This is another tool that the onsite property managers have to offer their residents who are struggling to pay rent. We underwrite them. We take the entire default risk away from the landlord and we pay you the landlord directly on time and in full. Every resident's balance that borrows from us goes to zero when we pay you. We also have a short term rental loan that is meant to solve intra month cash timing issues. So as I said earlier 30 to 50 percent. of our residents income is spent on rent.

We have designed as landlords a very inflexible system allowing our residents to pay rent when they have a challenge and we use sticks with late fees to hurt them to get them to pay on time. The short term loan allows us to pay you as landlords every single month on time and it gives the resident ultimate flexibility over that month's time period to pay us back. They can pay us back on their pay cycles, they can pay us back weekly, they can pay us back daily whatever improves their ability to pay you rent to lower their ultimate default risk and costs you as a landlord.

So I am very passionate about addressing the affordability challenge with innovative financial solutions. I believe that alternative credit specifically designed for the rental industry can do good and do well, that we can improve the financial stability of your resident base while improving your portfolio's performance. Thank you.

Gary Chance

October 29, 2018

Smart Apartment, Amenities, New Revenue

Elena Ashkinazy: Building And Selling A Smart Apartment

Gary Chance

October 29, 2018

Smart Apartment, Amenities, New Revenue

Time Equities Director of Sustainability, Elena Ashkinazy walks us through her smart apartment case study showcasing each component and sharing the amazing returns she garners.

VIEW PRESENTATION:

Elena Ashkinazy, Director of Sustainability, Time Equities

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Just imagine, thirty nine million people already have Amazon Alexa or Google Home in their apartments. Real estate companies can take advantage of it and start to create value for the customers of new generation who want to just move in to their apartment, plug in their Alexa and be able to control everything with their voice or with their phone. At Time Equities we always strive to be technologically up to date and innovative. So last year, we successfully completed the first smart apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. So we did it in pre-war apartment and when you think about pre-war buildings, a pre-war apartment you would probably never expect to see anything smart, but we did it. The project was so successful it was featured in The New York Times. This apartment was scheduled for renovation so we still have to buy switches, bulbs, kitchen appliances. Now we spent an extra $10,000, however we were able to sell this apartment for $120,000 above similar apartments just one flight down. So in this slide you can see green screen from Zillow.com two apartments, one is in the second floor and smart apartment on the third floor. And the difference in the prices was about 10 percent and the first apartment was on the market a couple of months before our smart apartment. So we sell it quicker and for a higher price. And today I'm going to tell you about all devices we installed and their features and benefits for residents.

One of the main challenge and actually it's become our value proposition for the customers was that old devices can be controlled through one application so the customers don't have to hassle between different apps. Of course we'll also estimated that the smart apartments can be super Energy-Efficient so customers can save up to 20-30 percent on their electric bills. And of course it's all about convenience. You can control everything with your voice. You can say what you want and you get it. And all with your phone. The first thing we installed was smart door lock. So you still can use your traditional keys, however, you don't need to. You can open and close your door from anywhere anytime. So imagine you're standing in a traffic and your guest came early. So now you can just open the door from anywhere. You can see when the door was opened, was closed and you can give access to your housekeeper, dog walker. So people love it, it's so convenient. We’ll also install smart lighting systems throughout the apartment. And before I started to work on this project I actually bought a lot of stuff for my place and I have to tell you it's amazing. I don't touch my switch anymore. Especially when you're tired. You lay down in bed and before my husband told me, “Elena, can you go around and turn off the lights?” And now I just said Alexa turn off all lights and she's like OK your wish is my command. So people definitely love this convenience.

We also install smart color lighting so you can pick any color you want. So for example we have open house for this apartment and a couple came and the lady was pregnant. So we ask, “do you know what's going to be, boy or girl? She's like it's going to be a girl. And we like Alexa make all lights pink, and of course she did it. And that just create this wow factor that you can also use even when you just show an apartment to potential clients. We also install smart shades in the bedroom so first you can open and close them with your voice but you also can schedule and automate them. So if you want, for example, you wanted them to be open Monday through Friday at 6:00 a.m. when you wake up and on the weekend youu want them to stay close until 12:00 p.m..

We also install smart kitchen appliances. So this is a smart refrigerator. This is what a game changer for the customers. First you can see what is inside of your refrigerator while you do shopping. Also your refrigerator will start to track expiration dates. You know we all have some stuff in our refrigerator. We have no idea how long it was there. So now your refrigerator will take care of it and will send you a notification when the milk is about to expire. Also it has a big screen on the door. So instead of putting stickers like we used to, now you can send pictures, voice messages, just messages to your family straight on the fridge door. You also can mirror a TV, play music and even do food shopping from your door. Other kitchen appliances are smart too.

So we have smart range. It's a gas range. So for safety reasons you have to start to cook while you in an apartment and set up a timer. But then again control it remotely. So you can change the temperature where you can turn off range completely. Also you can check the status so if you're worried that you forgot to turn out the gas you always can go on the app and check of that everything is OK. And we have smart dishwasher that sends you a notification when the cycle is over or when there's not enough dish soap. We installed smart outlet. So any appliance you plug into that outlet becomes smart automatically. So in this apartment we know we bought kettle and we teach Alexa when we say Alexa good morning, she started to boil your water tells you the latest news, the weather outside, the traffic situation on your way to work.

We also put that motion sensors in this apartment. So motion sensors can help you to create different scenarios. So for example, you have a scenario like the late snack time at night. So if you want to go after 12 p.m. to get a snack, you don't want to be blind with all these bright lights so you can schedule if some someone enters the room after 12:00 p.m. the lights will be dimmed maybe blue. We also brought some technologies to the bathroom. So we have this shower head with LED lights . So now you don't have to wait to try water and see if it's hot, you just can see if the water is hot, it becomes red, if it's cold, it becomes blue. And especially it's nice when it's a hot summer, you can get blue shower and when it's cold winter you can get a warm red shower. Also kids will appreciate it and love it.

Of course people love to control climate. So this is must have to have a smart thermostat and smart AC. Of course we will see a lot of benefits and opportunities to incorporate smart technologies in multi-family sector. First, it's a great competitive advantage. It's a great marketing tool for you. Also statistics show that you can increase either its rent price or sales price on average by 5 percent. And it's also energy efficient. So if you’re a building owner who’s paying for heating costs you will benefit from this as well. So what I want you to do, what I recommend you to do think where you can start. So for example, renovation is the best time to incorporate smart technologies or if you have a vacant unit so you can pilot. You can see feedback and then scale and roll out across your portfolio. Thank you so much. It was great to speak to this audience and if you have any questions I'm always open. Thank you.

Gary Chance

October 27, 2018

Tenant Engagement, Amenities

Richard Morell: Creating A Sense of Place

Gary Chance

October 27, 2018

Tenant Engagement, Amenities

The war for talent has become the war for the tenant. Equiem is creating a style of engagement and brand for real estate landlords to meet and exceed the expectations of today’s tenants. Richard Morrell, EVP Business Development for Equiem dissects what tenants want from their workplace.

Gary Chance

October 26, 2018

Facilities Management, Amenities

Marshall Cox: Intelligent Residential Heating

Gary Chance

October 26, 2018

Facilities Management, Amenities

Marshall Cox, CEO of Radiator Labs discusses the problems with steam heat. He explains how using heat data can solve for comfort and lower cost.

VIEW PRESENTATION:

Marshall Cox, CEO, Radiator Labs

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

My name is Marshall Cox, the Founder and CEO of Radiator Labs and I’m going to tell you about steam heat which is always a super exciting topic. So first of all steam has a lot of problems. We all know this we we've lived in an apartment or a house in New York City in particular. And the problem isn’t with steam. Steam is actually a pretty awesome technology that has been in these building since they were built often a hundred years ago, decades at least and they’re super overheated. The problem is that it's very hard to control where steam flows from that building and you can try to do that and they were really well balanced when they were built. But then the biggest change that we've we've seen is that we've invented nearly universally retrofit, windows with a double pane insulating glass and that completely changed the balance of our buildings. And now you have apartments that are cold and need a lot of heat and people who are super hot and open the windows as a result.

Obviously people are really uncomfortable because of this so it's a problem for tenants. It's a problem for maintenance staff because these things are hard to maintain. But it's an enormous financial and ecological disaster about seven billion dollars is wasted every year in the 10 percent of the U.S. residential housing market that uses steam as a primary source of heat. in New York City alone it's one point two billion dollars and you can imagine literally taking one point two billion dollars of fuel and burning it in the streets that's essentially what we're doing every year.

I want to get some perspective on this problem so steam has been around for a long time. It's been around for a approximately the same time as the phones. This is Alexander Graham Bell invented the harmonic telegram which is here. And think about how many changes have gone through that technology in the past hundred years. We all have supercomputers in our pockets now. The amount of change is dramatic and contrast that with steam, it's not necessarily a fair comparison. We have new better heating technologies but the radiators that have been in these buildings haven't really seen anything happen in the last 100 years and this is particularly relevant here because this Alexander Graham Bell standing next to a radiator and I can guarantee you that that building is probably still here and that radiators are probably still there. These things have been stalled for literally a century sometimes more than a century and they still work which is amazing but they have a lot of issues. So I got my P.H.D. at Columbia University. I invented this technology there. My research had nothing to do with steam or radiators but I lived in a unmitigated hellhole apartment. I was super hot. The technology worked really well. We went to compete at the MIT Clean Energy Prize, won that which was amazing and was essentially the beginning of our company. We developed a full building system and iterated over the past few years and most recently NYSERDA has supported an evaluation of that technology in a bunch of buildings and I'll talk about the results later. It was very good and we were really excited about what we're doing.

Briefly, what are the things you can do to solve this problem and overheating and buildings? Most people have tried to address this from a plumbing perspective but steam is a hundred degrees Celsius gas. It's a very caustic when it condenses into water and you're talking about a two phase distribution problem that's really hard to control that kind of distribution system with a valve or other kinds of plumbing solutions doesn't really work. We've approached it from a different direction. We actually control the area around a radiator and thermodynamically manipulate the steam flow within a building by doing that. Has the benefit of being easily installed you don't have to have any contact with plumbing is especially nice not to have to mess with 100 year old pipes and it works really well. Every one of these systems says a wireless radio we communicate data in real time to the cloud that lets us learn how buildings heat up and cool down and optimize that heat generation on a building by building basis. It also lets us connect this data to people's cell phones so they can control their temperatures even setting setbacks and different time based things you can do with a normal thermostat. This is a level of control that these buildings have never had in their entire history. So it's a pretty big deal for the people who live in these buildings.

These are those results I told you about from NYSERDA. Seven buildings of the past five years. We found 25 percent average savings maximum savings was forty five percent. And I just want to point out the minimum savings over there 15 percent. That building is a LeFrak building out in Brooklyn. It is now the most efficient single pipe building in all of New York. So even in buildings that start out very efficient we can still save a lot of energy. There's a lot of waste here. To put into perspective for income for for a portfolio, if you can save 30 percent of your heating costs that translates into a net operating income increase of 10 percent because 30 percent operating costs are often in heating the building itself. So that's a big deal for for portfolios.

Now I want to transition to talk about data. The first thing, the most obvious thing is what can you do with data in real time in a room? We take temperatures and we obviously feedback that temperature into our system is pushing down to a room when it's needed that allows us to do away with the drastic overheating under heating that you get in these kinds of buildings. This is real data. You basically turn an apartment into a flat lined temperature at your set point. It's a very important and nice change. My apartment obviously has these installed.

You can get a little deeper into the data as well. So in most bigger buildings you have what's called the two pipes steam system, and every radiator has a steam trap at that point and when we installed in buildings we typically find that about 25 percent the steam traps are blown and malfunctioning which means that steam is flowing into the that line being wasted. Every broken steam trap wastes about 200 to 400 dollars a year. So you can see how this adds up very very quickly. We can use the data that we're gathering to analyze steam trap health in real time and you can imagine that maintenance programs and buildings. It's hard to measure this stuff because it's in someone's home. We can just do it in real time remotely and tell people when things break and they need be fix which increases dramatically the maintenance efficiency of portfolios.

Very quickly looking dig digging deeper into the data there are some really interesting things here. If you can look at this and the left is these are two buildings top and bottom on the left is before we installed an app on the right is after we installed each one little block in these graphs shows a apartment that's been categorized by temperature. So the red blocks are apartments that are Saunas above 80 degrees. The blue blocks are apartments that are freezing below 62 degrees and you can see that before we retrofit is a pretty even distribution of very hot apartments and very cold apartments where you'd imagine sitting in a building. After retrofit if you could see the screen here, we've dramatically increased the number of green building the green apartments. So most of the apartments now are comfortable. Of course there's still outliers on the hot side. So this is on first level to point out that our technology is awesome, it works really well but this is a very rich data set. Of the apartments that are still hot. Why are they still hot?

It turns out that we can do some some interesting cluster analysis and apply algorithms to this data to figure out what characteristics those apartments share. So maybe they're on the top floor and the roof is uninsulated maybe on the bottom floor and there's infiltration problems but they're all on on the north side and don't get sun. You can essentially figure out what's wrong with these buildings. Then no one even knew existed. And that's interesting because you can take that data. We control the boiler we know how much fuel you'll save additionally if you fix that problem. And then if you know how much that problem cost to fix you can calculate a pretty efficient pretty accurate return on investment. And that basically will unlock a significant amount of capital. People want to fix their buildings. But the capital to do so is not really available because no one knows how long they're gonna take to pay back. No one knows how much it’s going to cost to fix. No one even knows what the problems are. So what we're trying to do here is take the data that we're gathering to figure out what those problems are to go how much going to cost to save and unlock that capital to fix the big problems in our infrastructure which is primarily located in our older buildings that no one has the time or money to evaluate properly. We have a big grant from the National Science Foundation to do this. So we're pretty excited about we're doing. Thank you so much.

Gary Chance

October 25, 2018

Connectivity, Amenities

Landon Tucker: The Future of Residential Connectivity

Gary Chance

October 25, 2018

Connectivity, Amenities