AGENDA

Welcome to MICA 2021

The 2021 Explosion of Proptech Innovation Capital

Billions of tech dollars are circling commercial property. We estimate that 40-50% of that is destined for multifamily due to the attractiveness of the aggregation of consumers in our communities. Owners and managers are devising new ways to participate financially in this innovation. We’ll look at 2-3 case studies of the financial value of participating in tech investments – in multiple ways:

• Investing as individuals or a company in a proptech fund, and benefiting from the due diligence information, MFN pricing and rapid growth of a company;
• Investing as a seed investor on your own, or as part of an investment club;
• Earning warrants or options as an advisor or early adopter

Our take is that the crisis-induced liquidity has created unprecedented savings, and hence investment dollars seeking assets. And with proptech being a relatively immature sector among VCs, commercial property has benefited from being an attractive growth sector, at the right time and place to capture new high levels of interest and investment.

Cybersecurity 2021: A Survey of Needs and Examples

Last month's online hacking attempt to poison the water supply of Oldsmar, Florida highlights the risks to internet-connected operational technology. And December 2020's penetration of cybersecurity defense firm Fireeye by nation-state actors clearly puts more tools in the hands of hackers, and decreases the ability to defensively respond.

What's your response plan for a ransomware attack on smart elevators, connected HVAC, or connected garage doors? Do you first call IT, the police or your insurance company? We're going to bring into focus some of the risks of industrial connected technology to commercial real estate. Fortunately, it's not all risks - there are plenty of mitigations that a company can put in place.

Lucian Niemeyer, Chairman and CEO of non-profit BuildingSecurity.org will give us an overview of the threats of operational technology, as well as some things we can do to de-risk the convenience these connected technologies deliver. As Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment (2017-2019), Lucian may have had one of the biggest real estate asset management portfolios in the world - 28 million acres, 500 installations and 500,000 buildings. He graduated from that position to a role as a cyber security advisor to the Secretary of Defense focusing on real-world operational energy and cybersecurity resilience policy development.

Lucian is a passionate advocate for awareness and mitigation of the risks to real estate. He will share some public examples of operational technology penetrated by hostile actors, and how we can plan for a future that depends more on this technology without increasing our risks.

Networking Break

Grab a coffee, stretch your legs and try some speed networking.

Be the Smartest Apple - How to effectively compare smart home when they aren’t apples to apples

Let’s face it: there is a lot of smart home technology in the market and they definitely aren’t all the same. It can be challenging to effectively evaluate technologies when you can’t conduct an apples-to-apples comparison. So what should apartment operators be evaluating then? It all comes down to the features and the operational and revenue potentials of those features. This session will examine and evaluate some of the most widely used smart home technologies and dig into the features and benefits of each, including thermostats, remote access technologies, and hubs as well as explore the vendor technology agreement and some red flags you may not even be aware of.

Presented by SmartRent

The Nuts and Bolts of Mint House’s Short-Term Rental Management Agreement & Why ZOM Living Chose This Model to Increase Profits.

Mint House’s multi-durational rental management agreement model is relatively new to the scene and gaining popularity because their agreements allow owners to increase profits even in this challenging environment.  Now, developers across the country are beginning to peel back the layers to learn about the key advantages of taking this worthwhile approach.

For the first time ever, Will Lucas, CEO and Founder of Mint House will be joined by Shaun Fink, VP of Asset Management of Zom Living and management agreement convert, at MICA to have an open and honest conversation about why landlord partners are moving away from the traditional master lease model the market has been signing for the last several years.

In this 45-minute session, Will and Shaun will discuss the ins-and-outs of Mint House’s management agreement, key differences between the two models, the successes each company has experienced together, Zom Living’s initial hesitations with shifting gears, how it’s resulted in increased profit and why ZOM are looking to roll this out across their entire portfolio.

Presented by Minthouse

Networking Break

Stand up, walk around and then join some speed networking.

Leasing Automation: Self-touring update

The numbers don’t lie – renters love the efficiency of every piece of leasing automation we can muster. Bots convert traffic to leads better than humans, and self-tours close at a higher rate than live tours. But automated tours come in many varieties, and property managers still worry that they don’t yet meet the mark for a truly intuitive, comprehensive solution. COVID has given self-touring platforms a boost, which has propelled several different business models. We’ll present updates on the state of the technology, and cases from real properties to update knowledge of how and where different offerings may be successfully plugged in to lower costs and expand leasing hours.

FLEX Rental Data Update – Southeastern Cities

The 1, 15, 30, 60, 90 or 364 day, flexible rental market provides a separate and distinct source of demand for apartments, outside of annual leases. While COVID crashed the short term rental market, it also created a new class of demand targeted and served by specialty short term rental companies with names like Kasa, Frontdesk, Vacasa, and WhyHotel. These companies manage vacant units on behalf of multifamily owners and help to create continuous-tenure living that is emerging as an identifiable demographic preference. We’ll spend this time looking at data comparing annual and flexible rental rates in key markets in the Southeast, as well as overlaying jobs, spending and COVID trends.

Networking Break

Stand up, walk around and then join some speed networking.

Housing Affordability Roundtable

In February 2020, housing affordability was a critically urgent topic of discussion at MICA. And that was pre-COVID crisis job losses and income curtailment. We’ll bring together some of the most involved executives who are bringing new and evolving thinking to addressing different elements of the issue. We hope to hear from industry advocates on the policy side, as well as property operators who’ve worked and harnessed resources to keep residents in place, while making sure that property obligations are being met.

Let’s Talk (Prop)Tech Stack

The pressures of operating an essential business through the peak of a pandemic forced multifamily to be more open to innovation. We had to quickly meet operational challenges by adopting new technologies. We found that a flexible technology stack (tech stack) was the linchpin required to maintain business continuity. 

The resiliency of multifamily has attracted a record influx of institutional capital driving asset prices to all-time highs. This has put more pressure on yields and increased scrutiny on technology’s role in driving operational efficiencies. At the same time, the opportunity to solve problems and create value has attracted more entrepreneurs and venture capital to our industry than ever before, and seemingly endless options for building out tech stacks. 

Join First Communities, VC firm Fifth Wall and proptech startup Knock as we explore real-world strategies for evaluating and maintaining a healthy tech stack, so you can make your technology a competitive advantage. 

Presented by Knock.

Fitness 15

Get yourself fired up for day 2 of MICA. Join Bibi for an at home office warm up.

Presented by BetterBot.

ESG: Climate Risk, Asset Pricing and Investment Strategy

Institutional investors are increasingly using readily available risk data to understand the actuarial implications of increased number and severity of hail storms, wind storms, hurricanes and other climate events and their impact on property values. Many REITs and sophisticated investors have exited markets with increasing risk, and sold out to retail syndicators. We’ll use this session to identify:

• Sources of risk data that everyone in the industry can use to understand the changing investment and operational environment
• Pricing and investor trends in affected markets
• Insurance and other risk management strategies for investors committed to these markets.

Leasing Automation: Battle of the Bots

The pandemic has technology implementations that would have taken months or years into just a couple of weeks, and we predict that automation is here to stay. One example: vendor data from bot providers suggest that bots handle leads more consistently, and set appointments more reliably than humans do, without a break and at low cost. It’s hard to say no, even if the first generation or two of these products are still sorting through the difficulties of handling interpretive idioms. 

With multiple providers in the market, we’ve contrived to set up a comparative process in which you get to see how different bots work in real life, using a series of standard conditions. Our goal is for attendees to leave with a more nuanced understanding of the limits of the technology, and how it can be used to create NOI.

Battle Bots:

• ACE by Leasehawk
• AnyoneHome
• BetterBot
• ChatIQ by RENTCafé
• Lisa by Appfolio
• Meet Elise
• Respage
• Diffe.rent AI

Networking Break

Grab a coffee, stretch your legs and try some speed networking.

Multifamily Hospitality and Flexible Rentals

Multifamily inventory is well position to capture a considerable share of the $2 trillion accommodation market. These vertical neighborhoods offer high-end living experiences with resort-quality amenities, activities, events, services, furnished units, and short-term rentals.  

Hospitality-focused multifamily operators can drive higher occupancy and rents by attracting today’s residents who want to live, work, and play in safe, friendly communities. 

Join our round table, moderated by Eric Bache of Reservation Software, as he leads the panel on a discussion of multifamily hospitality and flexible rentals with some of today’s thought leaders in the flexible-term furnished accommodation sector.

Presented by Reservation Software.

The role AI should (and shouldn't) play in our organizations

Whether you are an artificial intelligence evangelist or skeptic, we invite you to join this roundtable session to share your perspectives and hear your peer's thoughts on the promises and pitfalls of applying AI to property management operations. In this session we will prompt a discussion exploring the reasons behind the widespread interest in AI, what it is best suited for, and pragmatic ways the technology can be used today. 

Presented by Appfolio

Networking Break

Stand up, walk around and then join some speed networking.

Bulk Managed Wifi: Profit Source or Necessary Infrastructure for Innovation?

Community-wide managed WiFi is the communication infrastructure that supports the rollout of most smart building initiatives, from smart thermostats to water leak sensors to HVAC monitoring to controllable window shades. It also supports business applications such as virtual leasing, and adaptations of the business into short term rentals. Each of these areas create income value for owners, and increase property value.

Managed WiFi itself may also provide an additional ancillary revenue opportunity for owners that wish to resell the service at a profit.

The educational deliverables of this session are:

• Providing an overview of the physical network environment including access point density and considerations in siting equipment
• Understanding that all networks are not created equal: how the owner’s business intentions drive network design and cost
• Detailing some of the installation differences and difficulties between new construction and existing property deployments
• Providing a decision matrix for determining whether to continue with retail agreements in which residents pay their own bills, or switch to bulk agreements

Multifamily Trends: Show me the data

Data is King. 2020 presented a plethora of challenges to the multifamily industry. In this session, we will use the data of Costar to talk about the trends from last year and help unpack the opportunities for this year. Michael Cohen will also share an outlook on the state of the US economy and the national multifamily market. He will also present the health of the consumer from both an employment and household balance sheet perspective. David Kahn will then expand upon this data to focus on the southeast, discuss why it's performing differently and what to expect for 2021.

Networking Break

SPACs: Special Purpose Acquisition Companies and Multifamily Tech

In the past few months, proptech companies such as Opendoor (iBuyer of single-family homes) and Latch (smart locks and smart home ecosystem) have announced their intentions to go public via merger with an already-public shell corporation set up as a vehicle to find a company to buy. More recently, proptech venture fund sponsors Fifth Wall has announced their intention to raise over $300 million in public markets to fund the purchase of a proptech innovation company to take public. We’ll ask SPAC sponsors to educate us about the mechanics of this phenomenon, and to illustrate how this capital availability might change the fortunes of some of the larger technology partners we depend on in multifamily.