{"id":11315,"date":"2018-08-27T15:41:51","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T21:41:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.virtuance.com\/?p=11315"},"modified":"2018-08-27T15:41:51","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T21:41:51","slug":"real-estate-startup-amazon-hq2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/blog\/real-estate-startup-amazon-hq2\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon HQ2 is still a mystery, but this real estate startup already plans to expand to the winning city"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Monica Nickelsburg | Source: GeekWire<\/a><\/span><\/h5>\n

Bryan Copley remembers \u201cthe day that the last single-family residence in South Lake Union was bulldozed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0CityBldr<\/a><\/span>\u00a0CEO has lived in the same Seattle neighborhood Amazon calls home for about four years. He has watched South Lake Union transform to keep pace with Amazon\u2019s rapid growth, a metamorphosis that is far from\u00a0complete. \u201cI can see 13 cranes from my deck,\u201d says Copley.<\/p>\n

Two or three years ago, Copley was walking down Republican Street when he witnessed the razing of a house. He hasn\u2019t seen a single-family home in the neighborhood since.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen Seattle change and we\u2019ve seen a lot of people not prepared for what happens when Amazon moves into their city,\u201d Copley said.<\/p>\n

But the next city Amazon moves into has the incredible advantage of knowing the company is coming. CityBldr wants to show property owners in the neighborhood Amazon chooses for its second headquarters just what they can expect when the e-commerce giant comes to town.<\/p>\n

Sometime in the next six months, Amazon is scheduled to announce the winning city in its second headquarters competition. When that happens, CityBldr plans to immediately start speculating on real estate in that city and building a permanent, 12-person team there.<\/p>\n

CityBldr is a Seattle startup, with offices just a few blocks from Amazon\u2019s current headquarters. The company uses software to identify under-utilized properties. For example, CityBldr finds clusters of single-family homes in neighborhoods zoned for multi-family use that could be converted into apartments. In June, CityBldr\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0it would start purchasing some of the properties it identifies directly and assembling them to sell for a larger return than if they were sold individually.<\/p>\n

CityBldr is currently raising a $100 million property investment fund to cover the costs of properties in Seattle, Los Angeles (the company\u2019s second market), and soon, the city that wins HQ2.\u00a0That\u2019s a big jump from the $2.9 million CityBldr has raised to date. But purchasing properties in not one but three high-demand markets is a capital-intensive business.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t be competing with Amazon for the properties they\u2019re going after,\u201d Copley said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be looking for properties that are multi-family zoned but are not currently being used for multi-family housing. In whichever market they go into, Amazon will create a massive demand for housing and just like in South Lake Union and the areas around South Lake Union, people will be looking for homes close to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to looking for units to buy, CityBldr will release a list of the 100 properties Amazon is most likely to purchase, based on predictions from the company\u2019s software.<\/p>\n

CityBldr doesn\u2019t always purchase properties its software finds outright. Historically, the company has acted as a real estate broker in partnership with established companies, like JLL. In many cases, CityBldr will connect with property owners in the HQ2 city to show them how much their land is worth and help them sell it.<\/p>\n

Of the 20 cities in the running for Amazon HQ2, 19 are located in the U.S. If Amazon selects one of those cities it will be relatively simple for CityBldr to open an office there, as the company did earlier this year when it\u00a0launched in Los Angeles<\/a>. Copley says CityBldr is prepared should Toronto win. It will just require more paperwork to expand across the border. Toronto is actually the city Copley thinks is most likely to land HQ2.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think this will make people more prepared,\u201d Copley said. \u201cIt\u2019s also our goal to create more transparency around real estate, especially in commercial real estate, and that just hasn\u2019t existed in the past. We think this is a good first step.\u201d<\/p>\n

CityBldr\u2019s plan to make HQ2 its third market without even knowing which city will win shows just how big an impact Amazon can have on a community. Whichever city is selected will undoubtedly see its economy, startup ecosystem, and housing market transform.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the economic stimulus that Amazon is providing that will make that city a place to do business,\u201d Copley said. \u201cIf it\u2019s already an exciting place to do business, double that.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Monica Nickelsburg | Source: GeekWire Bryan Copley remembers \u201cthe day that the last single-family residence in South Lake Union was bulldozed.\u201d The\u00a0CityBldr\u00a0CEO has lived in the same Seattle neighborhood Amazon calls home for about four years. He has watched South Lake Union transform to keep pace with Amazon\u2019s rapid growth, a metamorphosis that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14503,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14503"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11316,"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11315\/revisions\/11316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.virtuance.com\/member\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}