- The Observer compiled a list of the 59 most influential and powerful people currently shaping the US residential real estate industry.
- The list was determined by looking at numbers and finding the biggest, the most prolific, and the richest people.
- Also included are some who consider themselves disruptors, as well as researchers, academics, members of the media, and people introducing new brokerage models.
If a person's home is their castle, then the 59 people we chose to profile for our 2018 Residential Real Estate Power List are the castle-builders, the castle-keepers, the castle-owners — in short, the most influential and powerful people currently shaping the US residential real estate industry.
Of course we looked to hard numbers to identify the biggest, the most prolific, and the richest. But while diving into this sprawling industry worth some $31.8 trillion, some themes emerged.
A crucial issue of the day is the affordable housing crisis, and some of our power players are working tirelessly to address it. Sustainability has also become an, um… evergreen issue, and plenty of our subjects spend their days in that arena.
We included some who consider themselves disruptors, and those who are funding them, as well as researchers and academics, media who stoke our collective interest in homes and what we do with them, and people introducing new brokerage models, or taking brokers' multiple listings services platforms to a whole new level. Pull them altogether and you get a true power list — the people (listed in alphabetical order) most defiantly driving the industry forward in 2018.
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Ori Allon and Robert Refkin: Founders, Compass
Ori Allon and Robert Refkin are on a buying spree. Flush with 1.2 billion in investment capital from investors such as SoftBank and Goldman Sachs, they are acquiring brokerages and opening offices left and right, north and south.
The goal is to have Compass, their six-year-old company, in the top 20 US markets by 2020. With the recent acquisition of San Francisco's Pacific Union alone, they doubled their revenue.
The Compass platform is central to their growth strategy. There are hundreds of multiple listings services and client relationship management tools out there, but as TechCrunch described it, "think of Compass as the equivalent of the launch of the first iPhone to the various other smartphones that preceded it."
The company also offers agents extensive office, marketing and business development support — and soon, a health care plan. As Refkin put it in a motivational speech to agents, Compass is "a company of entrepreneurs serving entrepreneurs."
Felipe Azenha, Jason Doyle, and Max Zabala: Co-Founders of Gridics, Makers of Zonar.City
Long before ground breaks on a housing project, there's the development phase, which takes an inordinate amount of time because 1) every city and neighborhood has its own zoning laws and regulations, and 2) very little has been digitized — until now.
Three years ago under the umbrella of Gridics, Felipe Azenha, Jason Doyle, and Max Zabala launched Zonar, the world's first 3-D, cloud-based zoning app that allows developers and city planners to plot projects while taking into account every rule, variance, bonus or local zoning requirement.
Seven municipalities, including Miami and New York, are now using it, as well as five commercial clients. After implementing the entire NYC zoning code (4,000+ pages), CEO Doyle wrote on their web site in April, triumphantly and in typical tech speak, "We nailed it!" (The more technical version: "we have confirmed that for irregular shaped lots, our proprietary geometric measurement and calculation process is producing the most accurate buildable capacity data available.")
Gary Barnett: Founder and President, Extell Development Company
A former diamond dealer, Gary Barnett has prospered in a second career creating luxury buildings in the Big Apple. Since he founded Extell Development in 1989, Barnett has been like a (very advanced) child playing with building blocks, making the creation of shiny urban towers seem effortless.
Extell's NYC-skyline-changing projects include One57, a super-tall hotel-condo on "Billionaire's Row" where Michael Dell just dropped $100 million on the penthouse, and Brooklyn Point, an under-construction snazzy skyscraper that will feature the highest infinity pool in the Western Hemisphere.
Last year, Barnett brought in a billion dollars worth of financing for Central Park Tower, aka 225 West 57th Street, aka Nordstrom Tower, a mixed-used development that will become the second-tallest skyscraper in the US, just behind One World Trade Center. Completion is scheduled for 2020.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider