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How Real Estate Is Recalibrating After The Pandemic

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May 4, 2022

Summary: On the
2nd Episode of Season 9, Louisa is joined by

Laura Smith
, Managing
Director at
Berkadia and Neda Fields, Director of Product Management at
Berkadia to chat about digital transformation within
real estate. They discussed how Berkadia went about their own
transformation for internal product development and the use of
external technologies. They also touched on how to attract a
diverse workforce; a key issue during the Great Rehiring that’s
sweeping the post-pandemic market. During the global Covid
outbreak, while everyone else was downsizing, Berkadia’s adoption
of industry-leading technologies helped them to double their
workforce.


Resources:


Companies Mentioned:


Shout Outs:


Key Insights From This Episode: 

  • During the pandemic while everyone else was
    downsizing, we were recalibrating and employee staff sizes had
    almost doubled. – Laura
  • Job candidates are asking about the culture,
    what does the business contribute to the community, are there
    different programs, different intentions, what is the whole
    progression and what do they offer? – Louisa
  • It is important to have different backgrounds
    to contribute to innovations. – Neda 
  • Diversity is not just about gender. –
    Neda
  • Bring your YOU to work. Be yourself, and have
    that freedom to express yourself as yourself so that you feel
    comfortable sharing your ideas and contributing to the innovation.
    – Neda 
  • Give people flexibility, especially if we’ve
    learned nothing else from COVID, we all have to learn to embrace
    change and be flexible with whatever comes our way. –
    Laura
  • Business is not usual, there’s no more normal.
    Noone knows what the new normal is. – Laura
  • The real estate industry has been an industry
    that has been reluctant to technology innovation. –
    Neda


Keywords:
Technology,
PropTech, Women, Data, Digital Transformation


About Our Guests:

Neda Fields

Neda Fields leads cross-functional efforts and teams in the
development of data insight and visualisation tools for real estate
market research. Berkadia’s Data and Analytics tools synthesise
property fundamentals, demographics and market intelligence to
optimise the evaluation of real estate investments. Neda was
selected as one of Real Estate Forum’s CRE Tech Influencers in
2021.

Neda began her career with KPMG
in the Information Risk Management practice where she advised
numerous clients on their Information Technology internal control
frameworks. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in
Computer Information Systems from Missouri State
University.


Laura Smith

As Managing Director,

Laura Smith
is
responsible for loan origination of market-rate multifamily,
affordable and healthcare properties nationwide. Over the course of
her career, she has underwritten approximately $6 billion in FHA,
Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and Wall street conduit transactions. She
has originated and closed more than 120 transactions totaling
nearly $1 billion.

Laura holds a bachelor’s degree
in political science from West Chester University and in German
from the University of Marburg, Germany. In 1992, she received her
Masters of Business Administration from American University with a
concentration in real estate finance.


Berkadia

Berkadia, a joint venture of Berkshire Hathaway and Jefferies Financial
Group
, is a leader in
the commercial real estate industry, offering a robust suite of
services to our multifamily and commercial property clients.
Powered by deep relationships and industry-changing technology, our
people sell, finance, and service commercial real estate, providing
support for the entire life cycle of our clients’ assets. Our
unique ownership structure allows us to put our clients’ interests
first and create a marketplace that delivers a superior
experience


About Our Host

Louisa Dickins

Louisa is the co-founder of LMRE, which has rapidly
become the market leading global PropTech recruitment platform and
search consultancy with operations across North America, United
Kingdom, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

To promote the industry she is
so passionate about, Louisa set up the Global podcast


‘The Propcast’
where she
hosts and invites guests from the built environment space to join
her in conversation about innovation.


About LMRE

LMRE is globally recognised for leading the way in
Real Estate Tech & Innovation talent management.

From the outset our vision was
to become a global provider of the very best strategic talent to
the most innovative organisations in PropTech, ConTech, Smart
Buildings, ESG, Sustainability and Strategic Consulting.

At LMRE we are fully committed
at all times to exceed the expectations of our candidates and
clients by providing the very best advice and by unlocking
exclusive opportunities across our global network in the UK,
Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.


Timestamps:

[01:10] Laura: Talk us through
your journey to Berkadia. 

  • I left Love Funding (Dwight Capital) when the
    company was bought by a bank and the culture started to
    change.  
  • The unique culture and technology blew me away
    when I met with Berkadia’s senior management
    team. 

 [02:50] Neda: Talk us
through your journey to Berkadia and what your role
entails. 

  • I joined Berkadia about 9 years ago because we
    decided to relocate to the Philadelphia area. 
  • I was really impressed with Berkadia’s
    leadership and that is why I joined the company. And the best part
    is that I have had the opportunity to do several different
    roles. 
  • I started in compliance then slowly moved into
    the data and data science group and then evolved into the product
    team and through that continue to develop the data analytics tools
    that Berkadia has developed. 

[04:20] Neda: Talk us through
the digital transformation at Berkadia. 

  • Berkadia is sitting on a lot of data, we
    service over $350 billion in our servicing portfolio right now as
    well as over 100 bankers and investment sales
    advisors. 
  • We have the ability to gather a lot of data
    from all of the markets across the US and we combine that with
    other demographics and have built-out a big base for us to build
    our tools on. 
  • We started to see, how do we bring value with
    this data and how do we transform our managers directors into
    advisors, more so than transaction managers. 
  • How do we help our clients make sure that they
    have the right investment strategies through data-driven
    analytics?

[06:00] Can you give a couple
examples of your clients? 

  • Real Estate Investors of all
    sizes. 
  • Mid-market and institutional
    investors. 

[09:50] Your workforce has
doubled, where have you seen the biggest growth at
Berkadia?

  • In Berkadia’s technology team, we have had
    exponential growth over the last few years. 
  • Berkadia is a privately held company so when
    there is any type of downturn, we are able to take advantage and
    attract good talent to accelerate the company’s
    vision. 

[11:15] Can you expand on how
Berkadia is engaging with people at different levels in the
education system? 

  • We have an employee resource group called Be
    United, a summer internship program and we are participating in a
    work-study program. 

[13:05] How do you attract
people to your teams, what initiatives are working at Berkadia at
the moment? 

  • The DIB initiative has launched and it is
    management’s commitment to diversity.  
  • Berkadia’s commitment is not just about women
    but all backgrounds.
  • Bring your YOU to work. Be yourself, and have
    that freedom to express yourself as yourself so that you feel
    comfortable sharing your ideas and contributing to the
    innovation. 
  • We are highlighting individual
    stories. 
  • Mentoring.

[20:25] What products are you
working on? 

  • We have a lot of internal data visualisation
    tools to drive the advice strategy of our producers to help our
    clients be successful. 
  • We have an external product called redIQ. It is
    advancing how rent roll statements and operating statements are
    ingested and analysed. 
  • We have an internal initiative working on tech
    startups in the real estate industry.  

[26:30] What are the different
reactions you have seen from your products? 

  • The non-profit, mom and pop oriented are the
    ones we are trying to get on board. 
  • Larger clients who have portfolios of 20 and
    more, they get it. 

[27:20] The ‘LMRE’ part, Louisa
asks the guests to talk about; 

L – Touch on the
main
 lessons you have learnt throughout your
career.

Neda: You have to embrace the
change. 

Neda: Just go for it, whatever
you want to achieve, just act like you are already
there.

M – Please give
a 
mention to anyone / product / service.

Laura: Our IT and product
development team as well as the senior management team.

 

R – What has been the
most 
rewarding aspect of working in PropTech?

Neda:  Seeing the clients
face when they see the technology. 

Laura: Watching my team
grow. 

E – What are
you 
excited about in the future of PropTech?

Laura: Continuing to embrace
change and working with our technology
group


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