2023 in Review

In the wake of an unpredictable and turbulent year marked by widespread economic volatility and geopolitical uncertainties, the past twelve months have most certainly borne witness to a series of unprecedented challenges. Throughout this summary of LMRE’s 2023, we reflect on our highlights and accomplishments, both internally and externally, as well as insights and predictions for the coming year.

We expanded to the Middle East

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has emerged as one of the most promising markets for PropTech, ConTech, ClimateTech, and Smart Tech worldwide. With significant investments and ongoing developments in the region, we eagerly anticipate the transformative technologies that will drive growth in its real estate and construction sectors. While we have been providing remote support to several key clients, we believe that now is the ideal moment to establish our local presence and further cultivate our strategic partnerships with leading Real Estate Technology and Innovators in the MENA region.

Leading the Middle East expansion, as Regional Director, is Vishal Bhatia, a seasoned professional with over 15 years of experience in the property industry. He has held senior-level positions at several housing developers in the UK and over the past few years has consulted many global real estate businesses by helping them embrace innovation and digitalisation. Vishal’s appointment reflects LMRE’s commitment to appointing top talent to spearhead its expansion into new markets.

Find out more: https://www.lmre.tech/company-news/lmre-is-expanding-to-the-middle-east/

Annual Salary Survey

LMRE released its second annual salary and culture benchmark report that gathered insights from all levels within an organization to understand more about how work experience and individual compensation differ based on geographical location. The data was based on a survey conducted in June 2023, which collected 600 responses from professionals working in the PropTech and Built Environment industry around the world.

The report, Navigating Technology in the Built Environment, revealed that job satisfaction in PropTech remains high despite the industry challenges and economic downturn that the last 12 months have presented. This year’s report found that 69% of respondents feel valued by their employer, remaining a key indicator of overall job performance, productivity, and satisfaction. Beyond feeling valued, 72% like their company’s culture, and 73% believe their leadership is innovative. In comparison to other industries, data from PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears 2023 Survey found that only around half of all employees are fulfilled or say they can be fully themselves at work, highlighting how the PropTech Industry has much higher levels of employee satisfaction than other industries.

Find out more: https://www.lmre.tech/company-news/lmre-releases-the-proptech-industry-salary-and-culture-benchmark-report/

Podcast

It is no secret that the construction industry is lagging in its digitalisation and adoption of technology compared to other industries. As one of the largest industries in the world, generating 13% of the world’s GDP and with a predicted global growth of 35% in the next 10 years, the adoption of technology and data tools in the space will make the market ripe for investment, as they provide solutions to some of the greatest challenges the industry faces. The 11th season of The Propcast was all about construction technology, providing insight into the challenges that the construction industry faces, how its implementation of technology will provide solutions for these challenges, and what the future of construction technology looks like, and much more!

Find out more: https://www.lmre.tech/propcast/unlocking-the-power-of-contech-season-11-of-the-propcast/

As the demand for secure, energy-efficient developments continues to soar, the number of smart buildings worldwide is projected to climb from 45 million to 115 million by 2026. This is why for season 12 of the Propcast, we have focused on all things ‘smart’, where Louisa has been joined by some of the leading Smart Building companies in the space, featuring the likes of KODE Labs, Haltian, Drone Deploy, Smart Spaces, and many, many more! With only two more episodes to launch in January next year, this season is not one to miss!

Listen to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-propcast/id1517717799

Awards

In November, LMRE won the ‘Recruitment Company of the Year’ award as part of the Property Management Awards 2023, an award that celebrates the company in the industry that stands out from its competitors. It was an honour to be recognised and rewarded for our continuous focus and dedication to providing the best talent to the rapidly expanding Real Estate Technology market.

In recognition of her dedication and commitment to the industry, our Co-Founder Louisa won the ‘Young Property Personality of the Year’ award, celebrating her continuous entrepreneurialism, tenacity, and vision in everything she does here at LMRE.

Events and speaking opportunities

In August, Louisa had the pleasure of joining Teneshia Naidoo on her CityscapeWIRE podcast, where they discussed the lessons and insights Louisa has gained from expanding into the middle east, PropTech trends, and the huge appetite for digitalisation Louisa is seeing in the UAE and MENA regions.

On the second day of Europe’s Largest PropTech event, PropTech Connect, Louisa joined a panel to discuss the sort of errors from leadership that are losing the modern workforce.

Louisa and Vishal then headed to Riyadh for CityScape Global, where Louisa kicked off the first day by moderating an inspiring panel centered around the innovations in PropTech led by Women. For the second day of the event, Louisa discussed cybersecurity in PropTech whilst Vishal spoke about the housing crisis.

Romey spoke at BuiltWorlds Americas Summit, where she discussed: “Workforce in Crisis: Today’s Needs, Tomorrow’s Solutions,”. The discussion centered around discovering diverse strategies for workforce training in a rapidly evolving tech landscape and connecting with industry leaders shaping the future of the built environment.

During Tabitha’s time at Blueprint in Las Vegas, she joined Julieta Moradei, Managing Partner at Overlay Capital, where they explored why the construction space has been slow to adopt technology, the startups that are leading the way in digitalisation, and Julieta dived into the Women in Construction Tech community.

What we have seen this year

The macro-climate this year has been turbulent but there has been some positives drawn closer to the latter half of H2. From a recruitment perspective, the market has been more client led vs candidate led, similar to what we saw in 2022. The surplus of roles versus endemic talent in the space has dwindled significantly from last year and so there are now more candidates adjacent to proptech than there are open roles. Candidates last year could ask for significantly inflated salaries (check out our salary survey results in 2022 vs 2023) given the demand for talent from a proptech background, whereas this year, given the mass layoffs made globally in the tech space, more candidates with directly relevant skillsets are competing for the same, smaller pool of roles. As a result, clients have had the ability to be more selective and price their open positions accordingly.

In H2 we have seen a significant increase in revenue related hires (sales, marketing, customer success, etc) as company’s race to increased productivity to stand competitively in front of investors. This polarizes H2 2022, where we saw businesses hiring more abundantly in technical functions (product, data, engineering) instead.

Our predictions for next year

2023 has been a tough year for those looking for VC Investment. VC investment in the sector reached $1.69 billion in Q1 of 2023 which was significantly lower than the $7.44 billion and $6.97 billion recorded during the same periods in 2022 and 2021. [Commercial Observer]. Across industry, we have seen more mergers and acquisitions happening as a result, and less early-stage funding (pre Series C) than we have in the last 2 years.

That being said, as industry does begin to open up more we hope to see an increase in VC investment in 2024, with Q4 this year posing us with some hope of continued sector growth on the horizon.

To keep costs low, we have seen more clients hiring offshore technical teams and expanding those, versus hiring talent where they are HQed and this is something we think will only ramp up in 2024.

The Customer Success space has been the most stagnant of those functions that touch revenue but aligned with the significant increase in new sales generating roles, we can only assume this will be paralleled with post-sales hiring in the New Year.