What Real Estate Giants Are Saying About Technology | Q1 2024 Edition

We listened to their quarterly earnings calls so you don't have to

Thesis Driven dives deep into emerging themes and real estate operating models. This week’s letter is a quarterly overview of what publicly-traded real estate companies are saying about technology and innovation in their businesses.

Each quarter, some of the largest real estate firms in the world tell us about their businesses. And we at Thesis Driven listen, with a specific focus on how those firms are thinking about technology, data, innovation, and the future. With Q1 2024 earnings season in the rearview mirror, it’s a great time to analyze what the biggest real estate companies are saying about tech. (You can read Q4’s roundup here.)

To do this, we sampled a representative set of the largest publicly-traded real estate businesses, including REITs and services businesses from the major food groups. Specifically, we covered:

• Essex Property Trust (NYSE: ESS)

• AvalonBay Communities (NYSE: AVB)

• Invitation Homes (NYSE: INVH)

• Mid-America Apartment Communities (NYSE: MAA)

• Equity Residential (NYSE: EQR)

• Lennar (NYSE: LEN)

• Simon Property Group (NYSE: SPG)

• SL Green Realty (NYSE: SLG)

• Prologis (NYSE: PLD)

• CBRE (NYSE: CBRE)

• Cushman & Wakefield (NYSE: CWK)

• JLL (NYSE: JLL)

• Boston Properties (NYSE: BXP)

• Blackstone (NYSE: BX)

• Brookfield (NYSE: BN)

• Welltower (NYSE: WELL)

For each, we’ll give a brief overview of how technology was mentioned (if it was) plus a review of key innovation-related themes from this quarter’s earning calls.

For this quarter, we dropped Camden Property Trust (NYSE: CPT) and Vornado (NYSE:VNO) and added Welltower (NYSE: WELL). Camden and Vornado had yet to mention technology, data, or innovation, whereas the addition of Welltower brings more healthcare coverage to our analysis.

Before we get into it, I always enjoy seeing our writing circle back on itself. From AppFolio (NASDAQ: APPF) CEO Shane Trigg’s comments in their Q1 earnings call:

We continue to leverage our head start and AI to differentiate ourselves and win new customers, focusing on the highest value priorities that deliver efficient growth for them. Brad Hargreaves, a real estate entrepreneur and editor of the popular publication thesis driven recently had this to say "AppFolio is the most forward thinking among all the major property management systems when it comes to integrating AI."

(Note that AppFolio isn’t covered in this letter as we focus on REITs and real estate services companies, not technology firms. But we’ve written extensively about the PMS landscape elsewhere.)