Brendan Wallace has been thinking about a lot of things lately. Wallace is a co-founder of Fifth Wall Ventures, a proptech venture capital firm that has been in operation for nine years and manages $3.2 billion in assets. In addition, he has a property in Los Angeles, which is still struggling with devastating wildfires. His place is still there, but many of his pals haven’t had the same luck.
Wallace is growing used to outside influences that are out of his control. For starters, the pandemic significantly changed the situation for a number of Fifth Wall’s limited partners, including CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, and Lennar. Unfortunately, office vacancy rates remain at about 20% nationwide for many of those same players, and analysts don’t anticipate that percentage to change as more businesses give up on the prospect of a full return to the office.
Proptech has also experienced ups and downs in recent years, in part because of high-fliers whose fortunes changed quickly, such as WeWork, which came out of bankruptcy last June after a botched initial public offering and extensive restructuring.
But change usually has unintended advantages, and Wallace thinks the sector is ready to recover. According to him, there are exploding prospects associated with asset resilience, or the use of technology to make real estate assets more resilient to interruption and damage. Additionally, he sees a great chance to assist Fifth Wall’s limited partners in more aggressively leveraging the need for data centers and the energy needed to power them in the IT sector.
Wallace described the situation in Los Angeles as tragic, emphasizing that while everyone on his team remained safe, their office in Santa Monica had to be evacuated. He referred to the crisis as a pivotal moment for the city, one that would likely lead to deep reflection on long-standing political and economic challenges in California. While acknowledging the devastation, he expressed hope that this period would ultimately bring important discussions to the forefront.
When asked about what comes next, Wallace highlighted the extensive cleanup and reconstruction efforts that would follow. However, he was careful not to frame this as an opportunity in the traditional sense. He remained confident that despite the crisis, people would continue to want to live in Los Angeles. He viewed this as a moment for rebuilding and reimagining the city, reaffirming that Fifth Wall was eager to contribute, even though the exact nature of their role was still uncertain.
Read Also: Navigating Global Trade: The Future of Cross-Border Business
