Digitizing commercial property provides endless new opportunities for owners and managers of large property portfolios. No one knows this better than Dr. Robert Herman MRICS, who left Hungary three years ago to start a tech company in California. He talked to us about the importance of technology in the property business and his new role as a member of the RICS in the Americas Board.

The retail sector has been heavily affected by the changes brought on by technology. Solutions such as indoor localization provide limitless opportunities for retailers wanting to stay ahead of the competition. Oren Rosen, Co-Founder of Israeli startup Infuse Location Ltd talked to Property Forum about the changing shopping experience.

Spaceflow announced the completion of a €1.6 million funding round led by Credo Ventures with participation from Day One Capital and UP21. The round will help Spaceflow achieve its strategic growth goals in the USA and UK, and also expand its product development team to continue refining its platform and service offerings.

Cushman & Wakefield announced its strategic partnership with Fifth Wall, a venture capital firm focused on technology solutions for the global real estate industry.

Globalworth has worked with Signify to deliver the first implementation of a light-wave wireless communication solution in the CEE region. Trulifi is available in the Warsaw office building Spektrum Tower. Investments in new technologies improving the use of the office buildings managed by the company are one of the pillars of Globalworth's development strategy in Poland. 

CBRE has expanded its team with the first humanoid robot available in a real estate company in Romania, PepperEscu. By doing so since May, CBRE aims to use the robot's technological abilities to create synergy between people as end-users of the properties, from office workers to visitors to shopping centres.

Prominent investors, developers, advisors and other professionals discussed how technology and climate change are rewriting the rules of the real estate game at the RICS’s latest global summit. Here are our key takeaways from the RICS World Built Environment Forum, organized in New York this May.

PropTech Romania (proptech.ro) is Romania’s first platform to bring together real estate players, investors, startups and tech companies, fostering innovation, digital transformation and collaboration. The official launch of PropTech Romania happened during Startup Europe Summit 2019 in Cluj, as a side event, an occasion to also announce the first Real-Estate Hackathon on 12-13 April, in Bucharest. Property Forum is a media partner of the first Real Estate Hackathon in Romania.

According to Antony Slumbers, one of the keynote speakers of Budapest PropTech Forum 2019, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is probably larger than that of electricity or the steam engine. In the world of real estate, AI can make the design, construction, management, lease and sale of buildings much more efficient.

Panattoni Europe has engaged in cooperation with Sense Monitoring, the supplier of smart automation and control systems for flat roof surfaces. Their first joint project will be a facility for a leading logistics provider, currently under construction a short distance from Warsaw. The roof surface in excess of 40,000 sqm will be fitted with the Sense S-One system. It will assist facility management in terms of roof structure integrity and help reduce maintenance costs.