The Chicago Chapter of The Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR) recently hosted its spring luncheon at Gibson’s Restaurant in Oak Brook. Ryan Moen, SIOR, Principal and Co-Founder of Versa Real Estate Services, moderated a discussion featuring Duke Long, Entrepreneur in Residence at NAR REACH, a Chicago-based venture capital and private equity firm providing a scale-up program for technology startups of all types, including proptech.
REACH, affiliated with the National Association of Realtors (NAR), provides companies access to an insight panel of more than 50,000 practitioners who help participating startups refine their products. Long provided some insight into the staggering amount of investment capital being directed to property and real estate technology (proptech), which totaled nearly $32 billion in 2021 alone. A former commercial real estate broker himself, Long stressed the importance of commercial real estate brokers incorporating more sophisticated technologies into their client interactions and service. He mentioned Dealius, a back-end software brokerage program, and LeaseUp, a lease administration tool, as two interesting proptech start-ups to watch.