In year 2100, new construction apartment buildings around the world will have robot concierges. Our version of cell phones, which may very well be permanently attached to our bodies, will allow us to pay rent and open doors. Power to our appliances will be completely wireless. We will be able to change the layout and colors of our walls with a push of a button. We will be able to interact with the walls in our homes—from ordering food to turning into the 18th hole of Pebble Beach Golf Course as you virtually drive a golf ball 300 yards down the fairway. Printers will be provided with the apartment, but not just simple machines that print paper, I’m talking about 3d machines that will allow us to print furniture, clothing, and other items. Our toilets will analyze our bodies and provide us with instant health reports that are more thorough than our current trips to the doctor. Homegrown vegetables will be the norm as onsite vertical farms will be mandatory in new construction buildings. Rent will be adjusted for 3% inflation per year (87 years from 2013), so an apartment worth $2,000 now will cost $25,000 then.
My name is Alex Hodara and I am a 25 year old real estate developer living in Boston, MA. I started my career on the ground level as a rental agent while attending Boston University in 2006. By December 2008 I opened a small real estate brokerage without loans or investors. This brokerage would give me some recognition as CNBC coined it “the first student run real estate brokerage”. By 2009 I had sold my first investment property and since I have sold millions in multi-family sales. In 2011 I began purchasing and developing buildings, and to date I have completed 6 multifamily buildings. I have been featured in Forbes and Businessweek as a Top 30 Under 30 Entrepreneur.
When I redevelop a building I focus on how I can make the building the most exciting to potential renters, while also staying on budget. I have started to incorporate things into my buildings like wireless tablets in kitchens for residents to look up recipes, free flat screen tvs that come standard in each apartment, and iPod docs in bathrooms for tenants to rock out when they shower.
On September 1st I finished my latest developments and decided I wanted to take a step back for a few months and study where I believe the real estate market is going. I figured the best way to study the future was to briefly re-study the past. I created a spreadsheet of years going back to the big bang (14 billion years ago) and studied sequentially until 2013. This process was mind blowing to me. I realized things during my studies that I never knew before, such as, do you know how long dinosaurs were around before they went extinct? Probably not, considering nobody I have asked has any idea. The answer is about 160 million years. That is freaking mind blowing considering homo sapiens have only been around 200,000 years or .001% of how long dinosaurs were around. This was the first time I realized how primitive we are and how far we have to go as a society.
I then started studying reading about the singularity and where technology is going. It is freaky, exciting, and a real mistake that I never even thought about these things before. We are living in a time where we are going to see so much evolution in technology it is going to be hard to keep up with it. Due to the law of accelerating returns we are going to see unbelievable advances in our lifetimes.
This gets me to my field, real estate. In my opinion, real estate is among the most important and least innovated assets in the world. Think about the current apartment or house you live in. There is a bathroom with modern plumbing, kitchen with modern plumbing, refrigerator, stove, and sink, a living room, and bedrooms. For the most part, your home’s technology was around in 1880. In 1880 we didn’t have cars, we didn’t have airplanes, and we most certainly didn’t have the internet. You are living in the past. But that will all change very soon.
This blog is a way for me to give readers information on real estate technologies as they are introduced to the world, and to put in a few thoughts in regard to how this affects the future of real estate. I am very much a real estate futurist student, not an expert, and am very open to hearing what others opinions’ on new technologies (positive and negative).
Soon real estate developers, such as myself, will begin to start incorporating unheard of technologies into our buildings that will improve tenants’ everyday lives. I believe the technologies I listed in the first paragraph barely scratches the surface of what will be around in 87 years by year 2100! Ah, so exciting and scary!
When I redevelop a building I focus on how I can make the building the most exciting to potential renters, while also staying on budget. I have started to incorporate things into my buildings like wireless tablets in kitchens for residents to look up recipes, free flat screen tvs that come standard in each apartment, and iPod docs in bathrooms for tenants to rock out when they shower.
On September 1st I finished my latest developments and decided I wanted to take a step back for a few months and study where I believe the real estate market is going. I figured the best way to study the future was to briefly re-study the past. I created a spreadsheet of years going back to the big bang (14 billion years ago) and studied sequentially until 2013. This process was mind blowing to me. I realized things during my studies that I never knew before, such as, do you know how long dinosaurs were around before they went extinct? Probably not, considering nobody I have asked has any idea. The answer is about 160 million years. That is freaking mind blowing considering homo sapiens have only been around 200,000 years or .001% of how long dinosaurs were around. This was the first time I realized how primitive we are and how far we have to go as a society.
I then started studying reading about the singularity and where technology is going. It is freaky, exciting, and a real mistake that I never even thought about these things before. We are living in a time where we are going to see so much evolution in technology it is going to be hard to keep up with it. Due to the law of accelerating returns we are going to see unbelievable advances in our lifetimes.
This gets me to my field, real estate. In my opinion, real estate is among the most important and least innovated assets in the world. Think about the current apartment or house you live in. There is a bathroom with modern plumbing, kitchen with modern plumbing, refrigerator, stove, and sink, a living room, and bedrooms. For the most part, your home’s technology was around in 1880. In 1880 we didn’t have cars, we didn’t have airplanes, and we most certainly didn’t have the internet. You are living in the past. But that will all change very soon.
This blog is a way for me to give readers information on real estate technologies as they are introduced to the world, and to put in a few thoughts in regard to how this affects the future of real estate. I am very much a real estate futurist student, not an expert, and am very open to hearing what others opinions’ on new technologies (positive and negative).
Soon real estate developers, such as myself, will begin to start incorporating unheard of technologies into our buildings that will improve tenants’ everyday lives. I believe the technologies I listed in the first paragraph barely scratches the surface of what will be around in 87 years by year 2100! Ah, so exciting and scary!
