Good morning, with temperatures hovering around 45°C (113°F) in parts of Argentina, hundreds of thousands of people were left without electricity when power grids failed in and around its capital city Buenos Aires, per Reuters.
Once again, this raises questions about climate change and more extreme weather.
Argentina, like many parts of India, has seen unusual amounts of extreme weather events like storms, forest fires and depleting river water levels.
It's high time we start taking solid steps to save the environment, starting with deploying available technology.
😷↔1 metre↔😷
Tree Hugging Real Estate Tech
The real estate sector is finally talking about the environment.
More so because without exhibiting ESG (environment-social-governance) initiatives, it will become tough for real estate firms to source funding in the near future.
And your mother will confirm that technology always follows investment.
Proptech For ESG
Between cloud applications, real-time sensors and management systems, proptech poses a unique opportunity to streamline data gathering, auditing and reporting in real estate.
Leveraging Data For Efficiency
Housing, which accounts for roughly one-third of the built environment's electricity consumption, often lacks high-quality, real-time data at scale - critical info that can be used to understand the true energy footprint of a building and save lots of power, for instance.
Enhancing Occupier Experience
Real estate tech ensures that better living and working conditions aren’t reserved for the elite.
For occupiers uninterested in spending extra for smart speakers, video doorbells, IoT or virtual assistants, properties which come preinstalled with the latest smart office/home technology can be productivity enhancing.
Creating A Feedback Loop
Because proptech enables property managers and owners to communicate with tenants, the same tech could be applied for local authorities to relay critical messages to communities/business districts - lockdown data or freak weather forecast, for example.
The *-demic Debate Heats Up
The debate is heating up over which prefix we should attach to -demic to describe Covid. And how we answer that could profoundly shape government policies, as well as the course of the virus itself.
First up:
Pandemic: When a disease’s growth is exponential and spreads across countries.
Endemic: A disease that’s always present, but spreads at a predictable rate.
Earlier this week, Spain’s prime minister became the first European leader to argue that it may be time for the EU to approach Covid the same way it approaches the seasonal flu—that is, by scrapping quarantines and case counts and instead relying on a “sentinel surveillance” system that aims to protect vulnerable populations.
But why? Omicron appears to be less severe than prior strains of the virus and has sent fewer Europeans to the hospital than in previous waves.
And while Covid vaccines don’t prevent people from getting infected, they have been shown to protect against severe illness.
💊 WHO Said What?
With a “huge amount of uncertainty and a virus that is evolving quite quickly…we are certainly not at the point where we are able to call it endemic," said WHO's senior emergency officer for Europe, Catherine Smallwood.
Tech Adoption Is Not Easy
Rebounding demand for housing, all time low interest rates and a resurgent economy mean that the real estate market is primed for virtual transaction activity.
And yet, 2021 will be better remembered for some of proptech's biggest failures.
🔽 The highest-profile flop was Zillow Group Inc., the online listings giant that pulled the plug on its nascent instant homebuying operation in the face of mounting losses.
🔽 Compass Inc., the tech-driven real estate brokerage, saw its shares plummet 50% as part of a broader selloff in property-related technology stocks.
🔽 Better, an online mortgage company, fired 9% of its staff.
Per this Bloomberg report, the bumpy year underscored a problem that’s been holding back the adoption of technology in real estate for the past two decades.
And it's not exactly tech's fault when each property transaction involves hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, and no two properties are exactly alike.
New Wealth Seeks Lavish Homes
While 2021 had many of us take pay cuts or remain unemployed, 35 tech startups in India entered the unicorn club, taking the overall tally to 72 companies.
An Assembly Line of UHNIs
A lot of these technology led startups received a boatload of funding and some of them even took the IPO route.
As a result of the large scale fund infusion, a lot of really rich folks - also classified as Ultra High Net Worth Individuals (UHNIs) - entered the housing market.
And what do you think rich techie founders want most?
Everything
The high end tech crowd wants luxurious villa projects and they want it to be the best.
These young millionaires have an eye for detail, so properties with beautiful designs, indoor and outdoor sports facilities are in huge demand especially in a tech city like Bangalore.
Enter Luxury Developers
To meet this demand, new tech developers with a keen eye for design are building the perfect homes for UHNIs.
With loads more millionaires to spawn in the next 5 years we can expect this market to grow with many niche design-oriented luxury home developers entering the market.
Listen to the Songs Of Disappearance on Spotify.
Stay positive. Many say this is the pandemic's swan song. 💚
☕ The Crew@Ginger Chai