Real Estate

Real estate investment startup Willow.ca acquired by rental platform Guiker

07/12/2023

Majority of Willow’s team “offboarded” prior to acquisition, CEO to join Guiker.

Toronto-based proptech startup Willow.ca, which offers a fractional real estate investment platform, has been acquired by Montréal-based rental platform Guiker for an undisclosed amount.

Following the acquisition, which closed last week, Willow.ca’s platform features have been replicated on Guiker’s platform. In a statement sent to BetaKit, Guiker CEO Nan Hao said all of Willow.ca’s existing users have been migrated to Guiker

“With the acquisition of Willow.ca, we can transform rental activity into investment opportunities, driving up ROI as our user base continues to expand.”

Nan Hao

Willow.ca CEO Logan Yergens will stay on at Guiker as chief compliance officer to ensure the platform is compliant with OSC regulations. Hao said most of Willow.ca’s team was “offboarded” prior to the acquisition, adding that the deal was “mostly for [Willow.ca’s] license and clientbase.”

Though founded in 2019, Willow.ca

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Real Estate

Jeff Bezos-Backed Real Estate Company Is Launching A New Fund To Acquire More Single-Family Homes Across The U.S.

06/12/2023

Many of the world’s largest investment firms have launched new funds over the past couple of years aimed at acquiring or building single-family homes to use as rentals. This comes as no surprise considering that the increased cost of buying a home has forced many Americans into being tenants instead of homeowners.

Arrived, a young real estate company backed by Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, has just announced its entry into the single-family rental fund space. Arrived currently operates a fractional real estate investing platform that has attracted nearly half a million retail investors since its launch in 2021. The platform allows these investors to purchase shares of single-family rental properties with as little as $100.

To date, investors on the platform have funded more than 388 homes with a total value of over $122 million. Properties are often fully funded within hours of going live, which has resulted

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Real Estate

Buyer's market or seller's? Find out how your city's real estate ranks

05/12/2023

Housing market competition is cooling across the country. Find out which are the best cities for buyers

Published Nov 28, 2023  •  Last updated 5 days ago  •  5 minute read

Housing market conditions are loosening across the country, giving buyers’ more bargaining power. Photo by Jeff Haynes/Getty Images

Article content

Cooling home sales in recent months have changed the dynamic in markets across the country.

Gone are the bidding wars previously seen in many communities, as higher interest rates cause buyers to take a step back and housing inventories build.

Bank of Canada rate hikes may have ended, but their effects have not, says Desjardins principal economist Marc Desormeaux in his housing outlook.

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Real Estate

Climate Alpha founder Parag Khanna on climate change's risk to real estate

04/12/2023

Parag Khanna wants to help people “future-proof” their real estate. The author of more than 20 books has long been known for his analysis and macroeconomic forecasts, and his new firm, the AI-powered analytics platform Climate Alpha, seeks to harness data to track trends in migration, climate change, and finance to know which locations will provide both resilience and profit when the world changes. He argues that the Black Swan is not the right way to think of climate risk, but rather the Green Swans are flocking, and headed straight for millions of miles of real estate.

At an estimated value of over $300 trillion, land and real estate remains the world’s most valuable asset class and yet it is directly exposed to climate change and demographic decline. As Khanna noted in his presentation to the Fortune Global Forum in Abu Dhabi, real estate is by definition “trapped and immobile.”

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Real Estate

3 Real Estate Stocks on Sale After a Downturn

03/12/2023

A perfect storm of rising interest rates, inflation, remote working and an oversupply of commercial properties is rattling the U.S. real estate market like never before.

A sobering reflection of the excess office space in the U.S. is the fact that about 18% of U.S. office space remained unoccupied, as of October. This percentage is predicted to increase as more leases come to an end and a growing number of companies reduce their real estate footprint.

The trend could have significant implications for companies that offer a wide range of real estate services to owners, occupiers, and investors globally. A potential decline in their stock prices could present an appealing opportunity for those seeking to increase their exposure to the real estate sector.

 

Jones Lang LaSalle JLL provides a plethora of real estate-related services. Its rich array of offerings includes property management, project development, advisory, maintainability, digital real estate

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