UK: In 2018 You Can't Be A Property Company If You Aren't A Tech One

MDR LAB

Following last year's successful launch of MDR LAB, our incubator programme for tech start-ups in the legal space, we are now heading into the second year of the initiative. The programme will see six companies chosen to spend ten weeks working alongside Mishcon de Reya's lawyers and business operations teams to develop and trial their products – giving the firm access to cutting edge technology and giving the companies access to legal and business expertise.

For the first time there is a dedicated Real Estate category, which has been sponsored by two property sector companies: Derwent London, owners of one the largest commercial real estate portfolios in central London, and Coyote, a cloud-based property software platform which provides a central hub for managing market and asset data. We look forward to working with this year's applicants as we continue to support and recognise innovation and technology as the key to improving our industry.

Property Week's Tech Bytes event

At Mishcon de Reya we have long recognised that Proptech is shaking up the way our built environment is planned, designed, constructed, marketed and sold. Whilst its introduction has the potential to improve efficiency and open up new business opportunities, embracing what is a relatively new concept can be a minefield for developers, landlords and agents.

Alongside KPMG and Leverton, Mishcon de Reya sponsored a seminar held by Property Week to bring together leading proptech players for the inaugural TechBytes seminar, providing an industry audience with the insight and knowledge to navigate the challenges of the changing real estate landscape.

The panel included speakers from Datscha, Digital Shadows, JLL and Property.Works, covering a range of subjects from Big Data to the threat of hacking and cybersecurity. To round off the day, four proptech start-ups pitched their data-based business ideas to a panel of industry experts, introduced by Mishcon de Reya's own Chief Technology Officer, Nick West. The take home message from the event was that whilst the increasing emergence of technology in the property industry is not without its challenges, if done right it has the potential to change the way property is planned, designed, constructed, marketed and sold for the better.

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