Non-conventional players including technology companies, social entrepreneurs, grass roots organizations and predatory investors have infiltrated the real estate industry creating both positive and negative impacts. In other cases traditional real estate sectors are collapsing due to shifts in how people live, work, shop, or move around. In some cases these disruptions have greatly benefited shareholders and investors, but decimated workers. In other cases they have benefited end users, or created opportunities for new players to enter the market. A number of sectors will have to be rethought to appeal to new audiences and shifting landscapes. We will investigate a number of these innovations and create a catalog of methods, precedents, writings and critiques in order to raise our collective knowledge of innovation in the field.

Who is disrupted by this innovation?

How does this disruption change the underwriting process?

How does this affect the built environment?

Who benefits and in what ways from the disruption/innovation?

What regulatory frameworks might help or hinder the disruption?

How do financing options, operations and an exit work with these kinds of developments?

Speculating on how these ripple through the economy, what does it look like 10/20/50 years from now?

What Is an Asset Class?

An asset class is a group of investments that have similar characteristics, are readily identifiable in the ways they are regulated, financed or thought about in the marketplace. Asset classes have traditionally been categories of investments such as equities or stocks, bonds and money market funds, but can also be categories such as real estate types, retail sectors and even cryptocurrencies.

Disruptions can overlap, such as a extreme weather creating a jobs crisis, or a pandemic severing supply chains. The short terms effects of disruptions can create shifts in shopping patterns, commuting and other daily routines. These seemingly short term changes can set up longer term patterns that reshape our built environments in ways large and small. Urban parks and other public spaces rose in the wake of earlier pandemics. The Oil shocks of the 1970s gave rise to fuel efficiency standards and ascendant compact car industry. Disruptions both natural and man made change regions and our responses have a profound effect on the most vulnerable.