Real Estate Capital Markets Conference + PropTech 2020

12 February 2020 | Christine Baird, CEO Clarus Tech Partners

At this year’s Real Estate Capital Markets (RECM) conference, a Goodwin Law and Columbia Business School sponsored annual event on global real estate capital markets, attracts industry thought leaders and a sophisticated audience of real estate fund managers, REIT executives, real estate investors, investment bankers and start-ups.

For 2020 the RECM focus was on real estate capital markets, global capital flows, smart cities and climate change, market trends in Europe, and technology in real estate.

Guy Metcalfe, Managing Director and Global Chairman at Morgan Stanley and Owen Thomas, CEO of Boston Properties discussed global flows of capital. Then was followed by a panel, moderated by Nancy Lashine, Managing Partner and Founder of Park Madison Partners and the panel included Nicholas Bienstock, Managing Partner at Savanna, Jackie Brady, Executive Director of Business Development at PGIM Real Estate and Craig Leupold, Strategic Advisor to Green Street Advisors who discussed the flow of global capital for commercial real estate investments, the global economic outlook, and potential impacts to their organization’s investment decisions.

Keith Breslauer, Managing Director and Senior Partner at Patron Capital Advisors, a firm with 20 years experience in European property investing, discussed his perspectives on the strong European markets.

This year’s conference again discussed PropTech – merging real estate and technology – by Marc Ricks, CEO & Head of Corporate Development, by Sidewalk Labs, a Google Alphabet company, who discussed Smart Cities use cases and how technology disrupts traditional real estate asset classes.

For example:

Offices – WeWork, Covene, and VTS

Residential – Common, Compass, Opendoor

Retail – Amazon, Warby Parker, BONOBOS