On the latest episode of Coffee Talk, TRD’s Amir Korangy sat with wellness real estate CEO Paul Scialla, whose company Delos has raised over $230 million to further its mission of, as Scialla put it, “merging the health sciences with the building sciences.”

The company has been valued at over $1 billion and attracted attention back in 2014 with a wellness-first development. The project’s residents, including Delos board members Deepak Chopra and Leonardo DiCaprio, enjoyed vitamin-C infused showers and cork floors engineered to provide lumbar support.

But the company’s goals go beyond splashy luxe developments. Since 2014, it has garnered investments from the likes of Bill Gates, expanded into Asia and Australia, and made partnerships with major real estate players like Brookfield, Lendlease, and Marriott.

Delos’ company includes subsidiary the International Well Building Institute, which provides a new set of standards for building owners and developers.

“This is going way beyond removing what’s harmful or toxic and promoting what’s beneficial,” Scialla explained. That includes monitoring the quality of the water, examining the way a building’s lighting influences productivity and engineering spaces that encourage healthy lifestyles.

The Well Building Institute “WELL certifies” buildings that provide healthy environs and practices. Delos’ various products — which include the plug-and-play air filters used in its partnership with the NYC Department of Education— provide solutions for the buildings that fall below the WELL standard. Scialla said WELL certification doesn’t require the use of Delos products. “[The standard] is about achieving outcomes,” he said.

The science here is fueled by Delos’ Well Living Lab, a collaboration with the Mayo Clinic. And it seems especially prescient today. Scialla uses the term “health safety” to refer to the need driving many developers. “Unfortunately, it takes something like a pandemic for people to realize something very simple,” he said. “What surrounds us matters.”

Still, Korangy wondered whether developers would push back against another cost add-on.

“Like any movement, I think it takes a while. Green building and green principles did not just convert overnight,” Scialla said. “The WELL building proposition… has never been anything more than maybe a half a percent premium in construction costs.”

So for Delos, the pandemic has brought a silver lining. “What we’ve seen is certainly a catalyst here for the wellness real estate movement.”

The post Meet the “wellness real estate movement” evangelist appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

A former Miami golf course turned into an industrial park. A Hollywood warehouse chopped up into six smaller offerings. And a bidding war over industrial space in East Hialeah.

Commercial brokers recount these tales in South Florida, a market with high demand for warehouses but not enough industrial-zoned land for new development. Industrial experts must turn to creative problem solving, as a reluctance to visit brick-and-mortar stores has led to a boom in online shopping and a burgeoning need to store appliances, food and other goods.

Miami-Dade County may only have about 500 acres of developable industrial land left, mostly controlled by institutional developers and real estate investment trusts. New, desirable, Class A warehouses take up about 10 acres each, said Jonathan Kingsley, an executive managing director at Colliers International’s local office.

That available land translates to 9 million square feet of warehouse space, in a year that Amazon has leased or bought about 2 million square feet and Home Depot has leased another 1.1 million square feet, said Steve Medwin, Newmark’s executive managing director and co-lead of the South Florida Industrial Services division. E-commerce companies want warehouses as large as 100,000 square feet, with 32-foot-high clear ceilings.

The land constraint worsens northward — Broward County might only have about 400 acres of developable land left, and Palm Beach County might have 250 acres, Medwin said.

South Florida’s land shortage puts it on par with the industrial markets of Los Angeles and Northern New Jersey. In Seattle and New York, developers take inspiration from Asia and plan for mega multi-story warehouses, an asset that is still five to 10 years away in South Florida, brokers say.

Some real estate professionals see signs of a bubble in the nationwide industrial boom. According to real estate research firm Real Capital Analytics, values for industrial properties rose 8.5 percent in the past year, while retail real estate values fell 5.2 percent and offices stayed steady.

JLL’s third quarter report identified weakness in the South Florida market, ranking Miami-Dade and Broward counties No. 2 and 3 nationwide for the amount of industrial space that returned to the market during that quarter. Palm Beach County ranked No. 6. But brokers say that when tenants vacate an industrial space for larger and newer warehouses, it can take at least six months for a new tenant to move in. The brokers expect South Florida’s fourth quarter results to show high absorption rates from new move-ins.

Meanwhile, South Florida’s third quarter industrial vacancy rates were below 10 percent, according to JLL. Miami’s vacancy rate was 7.6 percent, with an asking rent of $7.43 per square foot. Broward had a 9 percent vacancy rate and an $8.50 per square foot average asking rent. Palm Beach’s vacancy rate was 5.2 percent, with an average asking rent of $9.40 per square foot. In the third quarter, almost 3 million square feet of industrial space was under construction in Miami, among 4.5 million square feet under construction in the tri-county area.

In the land of scarce land availability, developers and investors do what they can with what they have, said Medwin of Newmark.

Among the properties his team markets is 800,000 square feet of spec industrial space at Eastview Commerce Center at the southern half of the former Westview Country Club near Opa-locka.

The developer, Panattoni Development Company, bought the land from a former country club member and was prepared to invest millions in remediation and reconfiguring the golf course. It took three years for the lengthy zoning process and to address the environmental impact, Medwin said. The zoning delay is par for the course for newcomers to South Florida, he said.

In the end, Panattoni’s bet paid off. The $100 million business park at Northwest 24th Avenue and Northwest 119th Street was completed in January and is currently 98 percent leased. Rents at the park are more than $8.50 a square foot triple net, with tenants including Caterpillar and produce distributor Mr. Greens.

Panattoni has moved on to another redevelopment project. Last year it paid $24.3 million for a 20-acre dairy farm nearby with plans to build another spec warehouse project.

“The only way to own industrial land in South Florida is to get creative,” Medwin said. “If you’re an institutional developer who wants industrial property in this thriving port market, you have to go through this pain.”

Sometimes, overbidding is also required.

Starting this summer, Kingsley of Colliers helped a longtime client look for overflow warehouse space in Miami-Dade County. The client, a third-party logistics company, toured four spots in four weeks. By the end of that period, three of them were snatched up.

The company now has an offer for a 40,000-square-foot, second-generation warehouse built in the 1960s in East Hialeah. To get the space, the client will likely have to pay more than the landlord is asking. For this property in a place like East Hialeah, rates range from $6 per square foot to $8 a square foot, Kingsley said.

The bidding process is expected in a constrained land market, Kingsley said. It existed even before Covid-19 and it will outlive the pandemic, he added.

Creativity in the industrial market can come in many forms, brokers say. After more than 40 years in South Florida real estate, Alan Levy considers a Hollywood warehouse among his most complicated deals.

Levy and his son, Josh, at Levy Realty Advisors, had a client with a dilapidated 30,000-square-foot Hollywood building that had cycled through various uses over the years, including as the site of defunct toy store chain Lionel Playworld.

But the property near the intersection of State Road 7 and Pembroke Road had a mixed-use zoning that allowed for redevelopment.

“I saw a diamond in the rough,” said Levy, who works with private equity firms and family offices to find long-term real estate investments. “I saw the potential.”

Levy and his team entertained offers for his client to either sell the property or lease it to one tenant. Instead, Levy spent nine months and $1.7 million for work on the building, subdividing it into five units. The building is now fully leased to tenants that were looking for 24-foot clear ceilings, a little shorter than the height e-commerce tenants demand. The space is leased at an average of $12.50 per square foot triple net.

“In South Florida, you cannot buy this kind of land,” Levy said. “You could never accomplish what we did for what we put into it.”

The post Tales from the industrial boom appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

This was a bad year to sell a hotel.

Only two of the five biggest Los Angeles County hotel sales in 2020 would have made the cut for last year’s top five, according to an analysis of property records by The Real Deal.

The lack of big-ticket sales reflected a lack of deals period. There were 23 hotel transactions in the county in 2020, according to brokerage Atlas Hospitality Group. That’s a significant drop from 50 in 2019 and 48 in 2018.

A handful of the deals that did go down, said Alan Reay president of Atlas, were a result of “Project Homekey,” in which the state of California bought hotels to house the homeless.

Reay blamed the sales tailspin on market uncertainty caused by the pandemic, as state laws forced hotels to close down — and also gave lenders cold feet on hotel deals.

“It’s a wait and see situation,” Reay said.

A deal that would have come in at No. 2 on the list, the 502-key Renaissance Los Angeles Airport Hotel, which recently sold for $92.5 million, has not hit public records yet. The seller was Sunstone Hotel Investors and the buyer was not named.

Here are the five largest hotel sales that closed in L.A. County in 2020:

1. Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills | EOS Investors LLC | $100 million

How bad of a year was it for hotel sales?

Well, the top deal involved a property seized by the federal government.

Federal authorities seized Viceroy L’Ermitage at 9291 Burton Bay in Beverly Hills, alleging fugitive financier Jho Low bought the hotel in 2010 with money embezzled from the Malaysian government.

The winner of the August auction to buy the 116-room luxury hotel was EOS Investors, which the Wall Street Journal described as “a three-year-old firm that owns and manages about 20 hotels.”

Eugene Wang, president of EOS Investors, told the Journal that the property’s association with an international fugitive, “adds some mystery to the hotel.”

2. Georgian Santa Monica | BLVD Hospitality, GSM Hotel Owner LLC, ESI Ventures | $62.5 million

L.A.-based developer BLVD Hospitality led the purchase in August of the Georgian, an 87-year-old hotel that’s a block away from the beach, at 1415 Ocean Avenue.

Seller 4DS owned the 84-room, art deco, turquoise-colored hotel since 1991, but was approached by BLVD Hospitality about the purchase, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal. BLVD Hospitality converted the ACE Hotel in downtown L.A. into a live entertainment venue, and may do the same with the Georgian.

3. Days Inn Hollywood | Shamina Investments Inc. | $22.9 million

At No. 3, we’re no longer looking at trades of high-end hotels.

Shamina Investments Inc., a seven-year-old L.A. developer, purchased the 74-room hotel from Shaiu Trust, which property records link to Peter Shaiu, an Orange County investor. The deal closed in March.

4. Hilton Garden Inn Arcadia | Arbor Lodgings Partners Inc., GFH FInancial Group | $20.1 million

The 66-room hotel sale happened in February, before the pandemic swept the nation. The deal was one of several California hotel purchases by Arbor Lodgings, a Chicago-based company. The seller was New York City asset management giant Blackstone, which offloaded other parts of its hospitality portfolio in 2020.

5. Elan Hotel Beverly Grove | Kamla Hotels | $13 million

The final deal to round out the list also closed before Covid-19 hit the states. Cerritos-based hotel management company Kamla purchased the 50-room hotel in January from L.A. company, OSM Investments. The hotel was last sold in 2007 for $10 million.

The post An inhospitable market? LA’s biggest hotel sales plunge in 2020 appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Keller Williams is shutting down its popular mobile real estate search app.

The Smarter Agent platform will continue to provide services to clients until the agreement with Keller Williams expires, Inman reported. Texas-based brokerage firm Keller Williams has had a controlling stake in the platform, which lets users create branded real estate search apps, since 2018. At the time of the acquisition, Keller Williams also brought on 31 mobile web developers.

Early in 2020, Keller Williams released the app as part of a larger push to revamp the consumer experience. According to the publication, Smarter Agent indicated on its website that its clients represented 25 percent of the entire real estate industry — which would include 3,000 brokerages and 300,000 agents. Keller Williams declined to comment to Inman on the number of clients at the time of the app’s shutdown.

Keller Williams, the biggest franchise brokerage in the U.S. and Canada, is currently undergoing a larger corporate restructuring.

Co-founder Gary Keller, who said in 2017 that Keller Williams was “a technology company,” became CEO in 2019, but stepped down in October to be executive chairman of the board. Josh Team, president of Keller Williams, assumed Keller’s roles and responsibilities.

After a slow second quarter, the privately-held firm reported a surge in sales in the third quarter. Sales volume grew 25.4 percent year-over-year, hitting $127.5 billion, the company reported.

[Inman] — Georgia Kromrei

The post Keller Williams drops mobile application Smarter Agent appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Los Angeles County wants to renew its ban on outdoor dining, but a judge ruled last week it needed to provide more data on the subject. Now, the county is appealing that decision, according to the Los Angeles Times.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge James Chalfant ruled last week that the controversial ban shouldn’t be allowed to continue indefinitely without a risk-benefit analysis to justify it.

In its appeal on Thursday, the county called the judge’s decision “plainly erroneous and directly contrary to governing law,” according to the Times.

The county Department of Public Health argues that implementing and extending the ban is well within its powers. Officials said the latest wave of coronavirus cases in the county is justification enough for the outdoor dining ban.

As of Thursday, there were zero ICU beds available countywide. There have been nearly 41,000 new cases of Covid-19 reported countywide this week, and 272 deaths. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s young daughter is among the new cases. The mayor and his family are quarantining as a result.

In explaining his decision, Judge Chalfant said county officials didn’t study the impacts of outdoor dining in the nine months leading up to the ban.

The county believes it’s “not a court’s prerogative to second-guess the county’s response to a public health crisis and to prescribe the evidence upon which public health officials may and may not rely.”

The state stay-at-home order still bars outdoor dining through Dec. 28. Restaurant owners and other business owners have fiercely opposed both measures. [LAT] — Dennis Lynch 

The post LA County appeals judge’s decision limiting ban on outdoor dining appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Rockwood Capital and Lincoln Property Company sold a Downtown Los Angeles tower for $196 million, among the priciest office deals to close this year.

German investment firm Deka Immobilien acquired the 388,000-square-foot building at 915 Wilshire Boulevard, according to Commercial Observer.

The 22-story tower is 90 percent leased to 30 tenants. The federal government’s General Services Administration has a 15-year lease for about a third of the property.

The deal is a jolt to the pandemic-weakened L.A. office market and the second priciest to close since the virus took hold in the spring. Countywide office vacancy rate hovered at 15 percent in the third quarter.

The most expensive office deal of the year was Silverstein Properties’ $430 million purchase of U.S. Bank Tower, which closed in September.

Rockwood Capital and Lincoln Property recently renovated the tower, which has a $114.5 million loan against it from Deutsche Bank dating from May 2019.

Lincoln Property first purchased the building in 2003 for $49 million, then sold it four years later for $117 million to Brickman Associates. In 2016, Lincoln Property partnered with Rockwood to buy the property for $128.5 million.

[CO] — Dennis Lynch 

The post Rockwood Capital, Lincoln Property sell DTLA office tower for $196M appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Robert Herjavec, a longtime investor on the reality show “Shark Tank,” is hunting for a deal in Los Angeles.

The Canadian businessman and television personality listed his Hidden Hills mansion for $17.3 million, just 16 months after he bought it for $14.6 million, according to the Variety.

The “modern farmhouse” property includes a main house and guest house, which together have seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms. They total 14,400 square feet, and sit on 1.8 acres. He bought the property about a year after selling a smaller home in the Hollywood Hills.

Amenities include a home theater, gym, and a 10-plus car garage around the main house. Out back there is the large swimming pool, patio area, lawns, and the guest house.

Hidden Hills has seen a lot of investment this year. Kris Jenner and daughter Khloe Kardashian bought neighboring mansions there this fall.

Kardashian’s sister, Kylie Jenner, also bought a property there this year. Miley Cyrus paid $5 million in an off-market deal for a home in the neighborhood. Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, who were convicted in the college admissions scandal, also bought a home there for $9.5 million this year. [Variety] — Dennis Lynch 

The post “Shark Tank” investor looks to flip Hidden Hills mansion appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

The Covid-19 vaccine is being distributed across the country, but it may already be too late for commercial real estate landlords and investors.

Companies around the globe are looking at how they can cut costs in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and scaling back real estate holdings is one big way they’re looking to do so. Bloomberg analyzed transcripts from over 4,700 earnings calls between July 21 and Dec. 8, and found that one in eight “revealed that firms were rethinking their real estate needs.”

(If that figure seems bleak, consider this: Bloomberg says that “[g]iven the limitations of AI and live transcriptions,” even more companies may have discussed cutting real estate costs, but not have been captured in its analysis. Yikes.)

Companies aren’t just looking at reducing their office footprint: According to the analysis, other possible cost-cutting measures include closing branches and data centers and attempting to negotiate lower rents.

Already, office vacancy rates in major metropolitan areas are reaching record levels. In Manhattan, the vacancy rate recently hit 13 percent, a rate not seen since 2003. In Chicago, the vacancy rate is 22 percent; in Los Angeles, it’s 21 percent. This could spell doom for investors and landlords who have significant holdings in those buildings.

The commercial mortgage-backed securities market, meanwhile, may see heavy losses if companies continue to scale back their real-estate holdings.

[Bloomberg] — Amy Plitt

The post Global CFOs have a message for real estate investors: We’re cutting space appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Canadian insurance giant Sun Life Financial says it will invest billions of dollars into the Japanese office market, betting on a post-pandemic rebound.

The firm’s real estate arm plans to double staff in the country and invest $10 billion in Japanese property in the next three years, according to Bloomberg.

As much as 70 percent of that money could go toward office properties in central business districts, said BentallGreenOak CEO Sonny Kalsi. The firm is an affiliate of Sun Life’s institutional alternative asset management arm.

“We don’t think that work from home is going to be a big long-term trend in Asia overall, and in Japan specifically,” Kalsi said. “That’s part of the reason we are bullish on Japanese offices — more so than any other market.”

Other investors appear to agree. Investment in Japanese commercial real estate was up 27.6 percent in the first nine month of 2020 compared to the same period last year. Most other global cities saw a decline over that period.

Blackstone is among those investors. The firm recently paid $1 billion for a portfolio of predominately Tokyo office buildings.

The country has seen fewer cases of Covid-19 than many of its peers. As of mid-December, Japan has recorded 148 cases per 100,000 people compared to more than 5,000 cases per 100,000 in the U.S., according to CNN.

Kalsi said that working together in an office is an important part of Japanese business culture, so employees will want to return.

BentallGreenOak has spent around $968 million on Japanese properties this year and is working on a handful of other deals.

[Bloomberg] — Dennis Lynch 

The post “Bullish on Japanese offices,” Sun Life plans $10B investment appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Ever wonder what the views are like from New York’s most expensive condominium towers? Hungarian artist Andi Schmied devised an elaborate ruse to gain entry into some of them.

Schmied created a fictional identity for herself as an ultra-wealthy homebuyer, and agents ate it up, Curbed reported.

Schmied was able to access high-rise units at 25 of the city’s tallest and priciest towers, photographed those incredible views and put them into a new book: “Private Views: A High-Rise Panorama of Manhattan.”

Although she went to great lengths to dress the part of a wealthy European buyer, including creating a fake personal assistant named Coco and a fake husband, Schmied may not have needed to do so.

Not a single agent did a credit check, an ID check or apparently any research beyond some surface level Googling.

She mostly built her fake persona, Gabriella, based on questions that agents asked her while they looked at units. When an agent asked about her necklace, her answer was, “‘it’s a Hungarian designer,’ and that became my answer to any outfit questions,” according to Curbed.

“Or they asked me if we have a chef in the family. And then at the next viewing, I directly started talking about ‘our chef’ or his needs,” she said.

Schmied gained access to units at 432 Park Avenue, Central Park Tower and 111 West 57th Street among many of the city’s most prestigious and exclusive addresses.

Agents more or less took her word for everything. Eventually she realized that she didn’t need to dress up at all.

“From their point of view, you’ve passed the access, and you can do anything — anything is believable,” she said.

[Curbed] — Dennis Lynch 

The post “Anything is believable”: Artist fools brokers to access city’s priciest condos appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Ho, ho, ho … ly crap, that’s a lot of Christmas decorations.

A 5,400-square-foot McMansion that’s currently listed for $2.19 million in Colts Neck, New Jersey, is rather unremarkable from the outside. Venture indoors, though, and you’ll be confronted with more oversized nutcrackers, fake garlands and nativity scenes than you’d find at an actual Christmas Tree Shops.

The sellers, brother and sister Chris and Janet Munger, built the home in the late 1990s, and have spent the past decade and change filling it with an extensive array of holiday decorations. A small sampling of the siblings’ collection, according to the Wall Street Journal: 71 wreaths, 38 Santas, 30 trees, 20 nutcrackers and 14 Nativity scenes. (And a partridge in a pear tree, probably.)

“We always wanted to make it very special for everyone we knew,” Janet Munger told the publication.

In addition to the Christmas decorations, the home has four bedrooms (two of which are huge master suites), four-and-a-half bathrooms, a finished basement with a spa and a backyard area with a 65-foot pool and several grills.

And yes, the Mungers plan to take some of their collection with them when they vacate the home. “We already gave 70 huge boxes to the Purple Heart filled with different Christmas trees and stuff, but it hasn’t made a dent,” Chris Munger told the Journal.

The house is listed with Janice Rizzo of Robert DeFalco Realty.

[WSJ] — Amy Plitt

The post It’s Christmas every day at this New Jersey home appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

For the right price, you can literally blow up one of President Donald Trump’s former casinos.

Atlantic City is set to demolish the dilapidated former Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino on Jan. 29, and plans to auction off the chance to trigger the explosives that will bring the building down, the Associated Press reported.

Mayor Marty Small hopes the stunt will raise over $1 million, with those funds going to the Boys and Girls Club of Atlantic City.

“Some of Atlantic City’s iconic moments happened there, but on his way out, Donald Trump openly mocked Atlantic City, saying he made a lot of money and then got out,” Small said. “I wanted to use the demolition of this place to raise money for charity.”

Investor Carl Icahn owns the former Trump Plaza building and agreed to the demolition. The property has deteriorated significantly; earlier this year, pieces of the facade of one of its towers broke and came crashing to the ground.

Bidding is open through Jan. 19, and the top bidders will then participate in a live auction to win the prize.

The hotel and casino opened in 1984 and hosted several high profile events over the years, including boxing matches. It was one of four casinos in Atlantic City to close in 2014.

Trump owned two other casinos in the city, but he largely divested from all three casinos in 2009. The properties kept using his name under a licensing agreement, but not for long: In 2011, the former Trump Marina sold to the Golden Nugget chain and rebranded under that name. And in 2017, the former Trump Taj Mahal sold to Hard Rock International, and reopened as the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino the next year.

The outgoing President has often criticized city officials, blaming them for the Atlantic City’s economic woes.

[Associated Press] — Dennis Lynch 

The post Bid on a chance to blow up Trump’s Atlantic City casino appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

What happened in 2016 that caused the assessed value of Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s Atlanta mansion to drop by more than half?

The short answer: No one really knows. It may have been a mistake. What is known is that it resulted in a major reduction in her taxes, according to the Daily Beast.

Loeffler, who was appointed to her Senate seat at the end of 2019, and her husband, New York Stock Exchange chairman Jeffrey Sprecher, bought the 15,000-square-foot mansion known as “Descante” in 2009 for $10.5 million. Fulton County appraisers pegged its value at that figure for the next few years.

Then, in 2016, the appraised value fell to $4.15 million, cutting the couple’s tax bill from $200,000 annually to just $90,000.

A Fulton County spokesperson said the appraiser and other people responsible for such changes no longer work for the county.

There are no records of Loeffler or Sprecher appealing any appraisals during that period and there’s no indication they did anything improper to lower their assessment in a non-public manner, according to the Daily Beast.

But if anything, it appears that the value of the property should have increased. Loeffler and Sprecher spent around $365,000 renovating and improving the property in 2015, the year before the sudden change in assessed value.

Their eight closest neighbors saw their assessments increase while Loeffler and Sprecher’s decreased. One tax professional familiar with the Fulton County system called the Board of Assessors “a train wreck” and said the change could be a mistake.

Overall, prices across the Atlanta metro area increased 81 percent between 2012 and 2020. Earlier this year, Tyler Perry sold a mansion to Steve Harvey for $15 million.

[Daily Beast] — Dennis Lynch 

The post Why did Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s Atlanta mansion lose half its value? appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Property management software company RealPage is set to be acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $9.6 billion.

Thoma Bravo will pay $88.75 per share for the Texas-based proptech firm, the Wall Street Journal reported. That’s 31 percent above RealPage’s stock price, which closed at $67.83 per share on Friday.

RealPage’s platform allows landlords to collect rent and receive maintenance requests from their tenants. It also collects information on leases to compile market reports and other forecasts.

RealPage Chief Executive Steve Winn told the publication that the pandemic helped the firm to expand its reach as more owners sought to go virtual with their operations.

The company had been on its own acquisition spree recently, picking up electronic payment platform company ClickPay, property management solution provider Buildium and multifamily real estate engagement solution Modern Message.

In January, RealPage made headlines as hackers stole $10.5 million from the company’s account. The company claimed it had recovered $4.5 million of the money.

Based in San Francisco and Chicago, Thoma Bravo specializes in the software and technology-enabled services sectors. The firm manages more than $70 billion in assets. [WSJ] — Akiko Matsuda

The post RealPage sells to Thoma Bravo for $9.6B appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

It’s smaller than some people had hoped, but another federal aid package to help boost the pandemic-ravaged economy is finally on its way.

Congressional leaders on Sunday reached an agreement on a $900 billion stimulus package that would provide direct payouts of $600 to qualifying Americans, as well as revive a loan program for small businesses, according to the New York Times.

The deal, likely to be finalized Monday, would continue the eviction moratorium, which is set to expire at the end of this year. It will be extended through Jan. 31, at which time the Biden administration could choose to continue it. Additionally, $25 billion would be allocated for rent relief (including $1.5 billion to New York), but it’s not yet clear how that will be distributed, according to the Washington Post.

The measure would revive the Paycheck Protection Program, a federal loan program for small businesses that expired over the summer. The $284 billion allocation would allow nonprofits and local media to apply for aid, and it would allocate $15 billion to performance venues, independent movie theaters and other cultural institutions devastated by lockdowns.

Still, economists had warned that the size of the stimulus would fall short of the level of assistance needed to support the economic recovery.

The package included $4 billion for the cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority, according to NY1. The agency previously said that without as much as $12 billion in federal aid, it would need to implement fare hikes and massive service cuts.

Local and state governments, which had petitioned the federal government to provide funds to balance their Covid-ravaged budgets, likely will not get help under the current package. [NYT, WaPo] — Akiko Matsuda

The post Stimulus to extend eviction moratorium, provide $25B in rent relief appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

The world of industrial real estate may not be glamorous, but in a volatile market, there was no sturdier asset to own this year in Los Angeles County.

While the pandemic turned the office, retail, and multifamily markets on their heads, the industrial sector remained steady and by some metrics even improved in 2020.

As government-ordered shutdowns closed nonessential businesses during spikes in Covid cases, the need for distribution centers to fulfill e-commerce orders became even more important.

So it’s no surprise that the five priciest industrial investment sales in 2020 in L.A. County was from institutional investors. The firms — including Blackstone Group — remain eager to increase their exposure to Southern California’s strong industrial and logistics sector, as they have in recent years.

“Institutional investors see industrial as a safe haven as opposed to office for example, because we don’t know what that will look like post-pandemic, although I do see office recovering,” said Dain Fedora, Newmark’s director of research for the SoCal region.

The priciest deal overall was from prolific industrial investor Rexford Industrial Realty. It paid about $300 million for a nearly 1 million-square-foot complex in Whittier. The drop off from there was a sharp one; the No. 2 acquisition, from Blackstone, was just $83 million.

Meanwhile, Realterm’s purchase of a 130,000-square-foot Torrance warehouse that’s soon to be leased to Amazon was the most expensive on a price-per-square-foot basis.

In L.A., average industrial lease prices were up 2.2 percent in the third quarter year-over-year, and vacancy remained effectively flat.

“Many retailers have been trying to figure out their e-commerce strategies and if nothing else, the pandemic is pushing up their timetables,” said Dain Fedora, Newmark’s director of research for the Southern California region. “What was perhaps a five- to 10-year period for retailers to lock in their e-commerce strategies is being pushed to two- three years.”

Overall, the five priciest industrial deals this year totaled $593 million compared to $708 million in 2019. That’s a decline of roughly 16 percent. By comparison, the top five sales in the multifamily market were down 50 percent compared to 2019.

Here are the five largest industrial sales that closed in L.A. County in 2020:

3963 Workman Mill Road, Whittier — Rexford Industrial Realty | $297M

Rexford, which invests in infill industrial properties in Southern California, is one of the most active investors in the region. The firm bought this 45-acre industrial park in November around the same time it purchased three other industrial properties.

The complex has a total of 989,200 square feet of industrial space; the deal figures out to about $300 per square foot. The seller was Brea-based Unire Real Estate Group and Seattle-based Washington Capital Management.

8201-8221 Woodley Avenue, Van Nuys — Blackstone | $83M

Blackstone Group’s two-building deal in Van Nuys was the San Fernando Valley’s priciest deal of the year. The facility totals 10.3 acres of industrial and office space, according to Realty Bancorp Equities. The larger of the two buildings totals 290,254 square feet. Printer cartridge manufacturer Micro Solution Enterprises is the biggest tenant. Saint Gobain Containers and AT&T also rent space there. The seller was Woodland Hills-based Realty Bancorp Equities.

2751 Skypark Drive, Torrance — Realterm U.S. | $81M

Realterm’s deal in is the priciest per square foot this year at $548.33. That also makes it one of the priciest of the decade by that metric. That price is about twice the average rate for the area, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal. Amazon will lease all 130,500 square feet at the property.
The seller was Bridge Development Partners. It secured approval from Torrance to demolish what was once a Costco wholesale store in order to build the new facility. Instead, the firm decided to renovate the facility for the e-commerce behemoth. Bridge paid $41.3 million for the property last year.

15015 Valley View Avenue, Santa Fe Springs — Brookfield Property Group | $68M

The biggest sale of the third quarter came in at No. 4 overall. That happened in July when Brookfield bought this 303,000-square-foot distribution facility from Unified Grocers, which had also occupied the property. The deal figures out to about $224 per square foot. The facility was built in 1970 and the property totals a bit less than 17 acres.

2001 East Dominguez Street and 20740 S. Wilmington Avenue, Carson — Brookfield Asset Management | $64M

This industrial buy of two neighboring properties closed in early June. The seller was Western Tube & Conduit Corporation, which also occupied the space. The larger of the two buildings on East Dominguez totals 300,000 square feet and the entire property is 20 acres. The properties were built between the 1950s and ‘70s.

The post Here are LA County’s biggest industrial sales of 2020 appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

“We don’t need to go public in order to raise capital.”

It was September, and Robert Reffkin was making an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, touting his firm’s ability to attract funds without needing an IPO. With the housing market booming and tech stocks having a banner year despite economic turmoil in other sectors, Compass’ chief executive was deflecting what’s become a perennial question about the firm’s long-term strategy. “August revenue was 70 percent ahead of last year,” he said. “Our business is really surging.”

But behind the scenes, Compass has indeed been laying the groundwork for an IPO, long seen as the most viable path forward for the residential brokerage, which has raised $1.5 billion from investors since its founding in 2012, and has boosted its M&A activity since first receiving funding from SoftBank in 2017.

Read related story: The definitive guide to the Compass C-Suite

Since February, Compass added four independent directors and bulked up its C-suite, filling key roles after a period of high churn. (Former chief people officer Sara Patterson lasted three months before taking a job at Lemonade, an insurance startup.) In October, it expanded to Hawaii, its first new market in two years. The same month, it also struck a deal to buy title and escrow startup Modus, a step in its stated goal of building an end-to-end real estate platform.

Two months after Reffkin’s TV appearance, Compass sent the strongest signal yet that it plans to go public, tapping Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs as underwriters for a potential IPO next year.

Reffkin, formerly chief of staff to Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn, and Ori Allon, a techie who sold two companies to Twitter and Google, teamed up to found Compass in 2012. They were able to make a splash right away — getting Mayor Michael Bloomberg to attend the launch — and were successful at pulling in venture capital for a business usually ignored by such investors. But that money also made it a key antagonist for established firms, who accused it of buying market share and top talent.

Last year, Compass was the No. 3 brokerage in the U.S. with $91.3 billion in sales volume, according to research firm Real Trends. It was valued at $6.4 billion after a $370 million Series G funding rounding in July 2019, many multiples of chief rival Realogy.

But it certainly wasn’t immune to the pandemic.

In March, Compass laid off 15 percent of its staff and projected revenue would fall 50 percent. “None of us knows how long this crisis will last,” Reffkin wrote in a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to include independent contractors in a stimulus package.

When the housing market roared back to life, so did Compass. The brokerage reported record revenue in June, July and August. In October, home sales rose 4.3 percent to a 14-year high, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Meanwhile, the tech sector’s resilience during Covid had whipped private and public investment into a frenzy. By mid-December, there were 245 IPO filings in 2020, up from 204 last year, according to Renaissance Capital, which tracks IPOs. Total proceeds from IPOs were $76.4 billion, up 65.1 percent year-over-year.

Other real estate services firms began taking advantage of the hot IPO market. Dan Gilbert’s Rocket Companies, the parent firm of Rocket Mortgage and Quicken Loans, went public in August. Airbnb pulled the trigger on its own long-awaited IPO this month, achieving a $100 billion market cap after its stock more than doubled on the first day of trading.

Many of the industry-focused companies exploring the public markets have a common backer: SoftBank.

Lemonade went public this summer, as did Chinese listings platform Beike Zhaofang. Smart-glass maker View and instant-homebuying startup Opendoor plan to go public via blank-check firms. Even WeWork has said a public offering may once again be on the horizon.

Going public will mean Compass will have to finally open its books.

For years, rivals have accused the firm of lavishing agents with eye-popping bonuses and unsustainable splits. Following WeWork’s botched IPO, Compass took pains to distance itself from the co-working firm’s reckless spending.

“It may seem obvious,” CFO Kristen Ankerbrandt wrote in a memo at the time. “But it’s worth stating that it is hard to draw any parallel between our businesses.” Compass has a “culture of frugality,” Ankerbrandt said, that requires all executives to fly coach and get approval for any expense above $1,000 — a not-so-subtle reference to former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann’s private-jet escapades.

But since 2018, Compass has scooped up independent firms as part of a strategy that makes growth the top priority.

“We buy those who understand it is not worthwhile to compete with us,” Ori Allon told Israeli business news site Calcalist that year.

Industry analyst Mike DelPrete estimated that Compass spent between $220 million and $240 million in 2018 and 2019 to acquire at least 14 smaller firms with 4,000 agents combined. In his 2019 analysis, he calculated the deals cost about $55,000 per agent — a figure that didn’t include the five- and six-digit bonuses Compass sometimes offers.

Realogy accused Compass last year of leveraging its deep pockets to poach agents with “grossly inflated compensation packages.” It also accused Compass of flouting agents’ noncompetes and other “illicit business practices,” in an ongoing lawsuit.

Over the past year, firms with a tech bent had a distinct edge: Redfin’s stock is up 180 percent year-over-year, compared to Realogy’s 25.4 percent gain. Compass bills itself as a tech platform for real estate, but many have questioned its tech credentials.

There are also questions about Compass’ audacious goal to capture 20 percent market share in the top 20 U.S. markets by 2020. While it hit the goal in cities like San Francisco by acquiring the top three independent firms, it faces an uphill battle in fragmented markets like Atlanta. Since the pandemic, residents of major cities (like San Francisco) have fled to secondary markets where Compass has a smaller footprint.

In a December memo to agents, Reffkin struck an optimistic tone about Compass’ future IPO, which it said would enable it to raise cash to invest in agents and tools. “We will be able to invest more in building toward the Compass Northstar,” he said. “Anything an agent needs, Compass provides.”

The post A different kind of real estate listing appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

She want it, she got it: Pop star Ariana Grande is engaged to Compass agent Dalton Gomez.

The 27-year-old singer posted a series of photos of herself side to side with Dalton on Instagram along with a photo of a diamond ring on her hand with the caption “forever n then some,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Grande has posted photos of the two together over the last year or so and earlier this year. Grande’s latest album “Positions” also has “occasional slips of vulnerability that reveal the giddiness and anxiety of new love,” according to the New York Times.

Dalton also appeared in the music video for her song “Stuck With U,” a collaboration with Justin Bieber. Gomez, who is with Compass’ Aaron Kirman team, currently has the listing for Bieber’s Beverly Park home.

He repped actor Kunal Nayyar with his $7.5 million purchase of a home in Hancock Park last year.

He has also worked with snowboarder Shaun White and basketball player Chandler Parsons. Along with his work with celebrities, Dalton has been a part of sales for two Case Study houses — Case Study #21 and Case Study #16.

It was not immediately clear if Grande told Dalton “break up with your girlfriend” before they became a twosome.
[NYT] — Dennis Lynch

The post Ariana Grande and Compass’ Dalton Gomez engaged appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

As it prepares for what would be one of the most anticipated IPOs of a residential firm in years, Compass has overhauled its C-suite and reorganized key departments.

The firm has 18,000 agents (who are independent contractors) on its roster as well as over 2,000 employees nationwide. Since the departure of COO Maelle Gavet last year, seven C-level execs report to co-founder and CEO Robert Reffkin. Here’s who else calls the shots.

Read related story: A different kind of residential listing

Ori Allon
Co-founder and chairman of the board. Allon is the founder with the technical chops and Silicon Valley connects. He previously sold a startup, Orion, to Google and another one, Julpan, to Twitter. He worked as director of engineering in Twitter’s NYC office after the acquisition.
Fun fact: Allon owned an Israeli basketball team, Hapoel Jerusalem B.C., which he bought in 2013, a year after founding Compass.

Robert Reffkin
Co-founder and CEO. After stints at McKinsey and Lazard, he was a White House fellow and later chief of staff to Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn.
Fun fact: Reffkin started a DJ business as a teenager. His performing name? DJ Zahav, Hebrew for golden. His mom is an agent at Compass.

= Reports directly to Reffkin

Tech

Joseph Sirosh, CTO. Joined in 2018 to oversee the engineering team. He came from Microsoft, where he was CTO of AI and, before that, led machine-learning initiatives at Amazon.

• Ugo Di Girolamo, director of engineering and co-founder. Was at GE, Google, Julpan (with Ori Allon) and Twitter before launching Compass with Allon and Reffkin in 2012.
• Mark Humphrey, vice president of engineering. Joined in 2016 from FactSet.
• Rahul Singh, vice president of engineering. Joined in February 2019 from software company Puppet. Also ex-Amazon.
• Andrew Sheh, vice president of engineering.

Product

Greg Hart, chief product officer. Joined in April 2020 after 23 years at Amazon, most recently heading Prime Video.

• Matt Spangler, chief marketing solutions. A brand strategist who came from Tribeca Enterprises, which produces the Tribeca Film Festival.
• Greg Petroff, SVP of product design and UX research. Joined in November from software company ServiceNow. Spent five years at GE as chief experience officer.
• Roman Valiouline, director of product management. Joined Compass in 2015.
• Ashrit Kamireddi, senior director of product. Joined in 2018. Previously co-founded VeryApt, an apartment review startup. Was one of four execs from that firm hired by Compass.
• Manish Dalmia, senior director of product. Joined in July 2020 after 12 years at Amazon.

Finance

Kristen Ankerbrandt, CFO. Joined in 2018 after 12 years with the Carlyle Group and, before that, Goldman Sachs.

• Scott Wahlers, chief accounting officer. Joined in 2018 after working as controller and treasurer at WebMD.
• Scott Grossman, vice president of corporate financial planning. Joined in October 2020 after holding a similar role at Spotify. Formerly HBO and CBS Radio.
• Gary Kurotori, CFO West Region. Previously CFO of Pacific Union, which was acquired by Compass in 2018.
• Urvin Pandya, CFO East Region. Joined Compass in 2019 after 16 years at Realogy. Realogy later accused him of sharing private documents and sued to enforce his noncompete; it dropped the suit this year.

Business Ops

Rob Lehman, chief business officer. Former McKinsey associate who joined Compass five months after launch. Oversees regional operations and growth.

*Each regional president oversees regional marketing and agents.

• Kamini Lane, West. Joined in 2019. Previously, chief marketing officer at resale marketplace Tradesy. Oversees San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hawaii and Seattle markets.
  • Mark McLaughlin, president of Compass California. Sold SF-based Pacific Union to Compass in 2018.
• Danielle Wilkie, Central. Joined in 2018 from Craftsy, a video-on-demand site acquired by NBC in 2017. Oversees markets in Colorado, Texas and Chicago.
  • Rachael Rohn, president of Compass Chicagoland. Joined in 2018 from Outcome Health.
• Neda Navab, East. Joined in 2018 from Sidewalk Labs. She was chief of staff to Robert Reffkin and now oversees Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Nashville, Atlanta and Florida.
  • Rory Golod, president of Compass NY. Joined in 2014 from e-commerce site Fancy.com. Spent two years as chief of staff to Reffkin.
    • Leonard Steinberg, chief evangelist. Former top broker at Douglas Elliman, who was Compass’ first big-name agent hire in 2014 and helped attract top talent. Doesn’t directly report to anyone; doesn’t have corporate decision-making power. Runs the Leonard Steinberg Team; was formerly president of the firm.

Corporate

Matt Rosenberg, chief revenue officer. Joined in 2018 after a similar role at Eventbrite. Oversees agent recruitment, growth and onboarding

• Jason Gelman, senior director of revenue strategy and operations. Joined in 2018 from content-marketing firm Percolate.
• Christina Oliver, director of M&A. Joined in 2015 from Merrill Lynch.
• Robert Koehler, director of sales effectiveness. Joined in 2018 after sales management positions at HP and LinkedIn.
• Chris Aker, head of strategic growth. Joined in 2018 from Eventbrite. Oversees agent recruiting.

Anand Mehta, chief people officer (focused on employees, not agents). Joined in August from Bridgewater Associates, where he was head of people and talent.

• Jodi Taylor, head of diversity and inclusion. Her job extends to agents.
• Margaret Smith, head of talent management.

Pooneet Kant, SVP of expansion. Joined Compass in 2016 from Uber.

• Peter Jonas, head of business development (i.e., ancillary services, including title and escrow). Joined Compass in 2018 from Facebook and Uber. Was head of Compass’ Western region until last month.
• David O’Connell, chief of staff to Robert Reffkin. Former attorney who joined Compass in 2017 as strategic growth manager.
• Sarah Fisher, head of communications. Joined in February 2020 after eight years at Google. Formerly a policy analyst in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Sales

Mike Coscetta, chief sales and strategic officer. Joined in 2018 from Square, where he was VP of global sales. Oversees programs, including Concierge (where Compass fronts money for minor repairs) and Bridge Lending.

• Carly Litzenhall, senior director, new ventures. Joined in 2018 from Nielsen and Accenture. Former chief of staff to COO and led bridge lending service.
• Justin D’Adamo, head of new development. Joined in 2016 after 15 years at Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group.
  • Beth Butler, regional director of new development, Southeast. Joined in 2015 after serving as COO for ONE Sotheby’s International Realty in South Florida.
  • Tara Hogan, co-head of development in New York. Joined in 2019 from Stribling after the firm was acquired by Compass.
  • Steve Rutter, co-head of development in New York. Joined in 2019 from Stribling after the firm was acquired by Compass.

Legal

Brad Serwin, General Counsel. Joined this May after five years as GC at Glassdoor. Previously led legal team at eBay.

• Iris Lichtman, deputy General Counsel. Joined in 2016.
• Timothea Letson, deputy General Counsel. Joined in 2018.

The Board

Eileen Murray. Joined April 2020. Co-CEO of Bridgewater Associates and formerly an exec at Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.

Charles Phillips. Joined September 2020. Former president of Oracle. Served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Board.

Steven Sordello. Joined November 2020. CFO of LinkedIn, where he oversaw its $4 billion IPO in 2011.

Pamela Thomas-Graham. Joined February 2020. Former CMO of Credit Suisse and CEO of CNBC Television and CNBC.com. Also serves on the board of Clorox, Peloton and Bumble.

The post The definitive guide to the Compass C-Suite appeared first on The Real Deal Los Angeles.

Compass’ C-suite gets IPO-ready

Compass overhauled its C-suite and reorganized key departments ahead of what’s the most anticipated IPO of a residential brokerage in years.

With 18,000 agents on its roster, the New York brokerage also has 2,000 employees nationwide. Founded in 2012, Compass has raised $1.5 billion from investors and recently hired bankers for a potential public offering.

Since the departure of COO Maëlle Gavet last year, eight C-level executives report to co-founder and CEO Robert Reffkin. Co-founder and chairman Ori Allon doesn’t have direct reports. Here are some of the newbies (and a few familiar names) calling the shots.

Joseph Sirosh, chief technology officer, oversees Compass’ engineers. He joined in 2018 from Microsoft, where he was chief technology officer of AI.

Greg Hart, chief product officer, joined in April 2020 after 23 years at Amazon, where he most recently headed Prime Video.

Kristen Ankerbrandt, chief financial officer, joined in 2018 after 12 years at the Carlyle Group and, before that, Goldman Sachs.

Rob Lehman, chief business officer, is a former McKinsey associate who joined Compass five months after the company launched in 2013. He oversees the firm’s new regional presidents and their brokerage operations.

Matt Rosenberg, chief revenue officer, joined in 2018 after a similar role at Eventbrite. He oversees agent recruitment, growth and onboarding.

Anand Mehta, chief people officer (focused on employees, not agents), joined in August from Bridgewater Associates.
Mike Coscetta, chief sales and strategic officer, joined in 2018 from Square. He oversees programs like bridge lending and new development marketing.

Brad Serwin, general counsel, joined in May after five years as GC at Glassdoor.

Click here to see a more complete map of the firm’s leaders.

“When I came to San Francisco, I was taken
by the unique culture — people believed almost anything was possible,
and they were willing to believe in a 26 year old and his two friends with a crazy idea
to let strangers live together.”

CoStar, the FTC and NYC

The FTC may be trying to block CoStar’s $588 million deal to buy RentPath. But that didn’t stop it from rubber-stamping the data giant’s $250 million acquisition of Homesnap.

Maryland-based Homesnap, which is on track to generate $40 million this year, works with multiple listing services around the country, acting as a front-end portal for agents. It now has a deal with the Real Estate Board of New York to build a consumer-facing site. In other words: The CoStar-Homesnap deal will let CoStar take on Zillow and its New York City subsidiary, StreetEasy.

REBNY is pulling out the stops to make sure that happens. This week, it sent a cease-and-desist letter to tech developer Michael Gabriel and partner RealPlus, just days before they were set to launch a new listings site called homes.nyc. The letters accused them of using listings data without permission, though Gabriel said that wasn’t the case. “We are forging forward,” he said, “one way or another.”

NYC’s proptech play

New York City is doubling down on proptech.

As one of the biggest property owners in the Tri-state area, the city issued a request for proposals (RFP) seeking a partner to recommend startups to pilot throughout its portfolio, including public housing.

Last year, the city announced the pilot program. A key focus is to make buildings healthier and more efficient, and to make sure innovations aren’t limited to luxury real estate.

“We want proptech to be aimed at and used for a lot of the problems for residential buildings across the board, especially many of the older buildings, where detecting a leak and detecting energy efficiency can really make a difference,” Vicki Been, deputy mayor for housing and economic development, told Commercial Observer.

Breather runs out of air

A month after exploring a sale, Breather is looking to shed all 400 of its office locations.

The Montreal startup, which rents out office space by the day, laid off most of its staff. “I’m not sure [the business model] ever made sense,” CEO Bryan Murphy told the Globe and Mail. His new vision for Breather is to become an online marketplace for flex-office space.

Founded in 2012, Breather raised $112 million from investors. In October, it pivoted to a membership model to stabilize rocky finances. It later hired investment bankers to explore options including a capital raise or sale.

STAT OF THE WEEK

$38.6B

Can you say, compliance

Industrious is getting its ducks in order for an IPO. And by ducks, we mean C-level executives.

The flex-office startup hired Clem Turner from Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi as its new head of legal. He joins newly-appointed CFO Greg Barber, an ex-PepsiCo exec. “The stakes are so high in this industry,” CEO Jamie Hodari told Bloomberg.

Industrious, a WeWork rival, added Mary Hogan Preusse as its first female board member this year. Industrious has raised $220 million from Brookfield, Canada Pension Plan and other investors.

Insurance startup founded by industry vets raises $40M

There’s nothing sexy about homeowners insurance. Except maybe the flood of capital pouring into startups like Lemonade, Hippo … and now Openly.

The Boston-based startup raised a $40 million Series B, led by Advance Partners, just six months after closing a $15 million Series A.

Openly was founded in 2017 by Ty Harris, Liberty Mutual’s former chief product officer, and Matt Wielbut, who worked at Elements Insurance. Openly provides data and tech that lets insurance agents underwrite policies in seconds. “We at Openly recognize the massive opportunity that exists to challenge incumbents and improve insurance,” Harris said in a statement.

And the sector is hot: SoftBank-backed Lemonade raised $319 million in an IPO this summer. Last month, Hippo raised $350 million in venture capital from Japanese insurance giant Mitsui Sumitomo.

Small bytes

Opendoor and Chamath Palihapitiya’s blank-check company officially merged; the company will start trading under “OPEN” on Nasdaq on Dec. 21.

Move Inc., parent to Realtor.com, acquired Avail, a software for do-it-yourself landlords.

Forbes and L.A. broker Jeff Hyland launched a luxury listings portal.

Greg Smithies, former partner at BMW i Ventures joined Fifth Wall as a partner on the climate tech team.

Flyhomes, a startup that lets people make cash offers on homes, hired ex-Facebook executive Amy Sellers as VP of marketing.

India’s Infra.Market, a marketplace for construction materials, logistics and financing support, raised $20M from Accel, Tiger Global, Nexus and others.

LendingHome, which makes bridge loans and loans to investors to purchase rental properties, raised a $75 million Series E. Michael Bourque was tapped as CEO, replacing co-founder Matt Humphrey.

OpenSensors, an air monitoring startup in London, raised $4M in seed money.

Iris Automation, a construction drone startup, raised $13M.

Cove, a Southeast Asia co-living company, raised $4.6M.

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