Occupier, a New York-based startup that is building software for helping businesses make better real estate decisions founded by former VTS employees Andrew Flint, Matt Giffune, and Erik Pearson, recently announced it raised $1.4 million. This round of funding was backed by commercial real estate veterans and angel investors.
“Presently, if a business is executing a growth plan, adapting to shifts in consumer behavior, or accommodating an agile workforce, the choices for managing real estate expose them to significant cost exposure and risk,” said Giffune. “Status-quo workflows come with the baggage of slow decision-making, frustrated teams, and poor outcomes. By providing software that fits how modern real estate teams work, Occupier enables companies to achieve business goals.”
Using Occupier, teams are able to use customizable process workflows that deliver context and accountability during the leasing process for office, retail, or industrial space.
“Our customers are progressive organizations with as few as 10 leases, up to large corporates,” added Flint. “Typical users are dealing with the daily challenges of managing critical lease information, responding to c-suite requests, and interfacing with external teams advising them on crucial real estate decisions. Occupier’s audience has been struggling with managing this process in spreadsheets, email, and documents for too long.”
Occupier is also known for aiding brokers who desire to introduce discipline to the workflow of clients.
“Teams must adopt new strategies for collecting, organizing, and sharing real estate transaction and portfolio information. Only then will they be equipped to make rapid, strategic decisions that ensure long-term success. To this point, the Proptech movement has largely focused on landlords, but I am excited about Occupier, who is well-positioned to seize a massive opportunity to modernize technology for the tenant,” explained Tama Huang — who is the CIO and Global Real Estate Services leader at Cohn Reznick.
The current choices for managing a company’s real estate decisions are antiquated lease administration systems. Or companies have to use spreadsheets and email. Occupier fixes this problem by centralizing the people, workflow, and data informing important real estate decisions.
“Occupier encourages proactivity, delivering insights into risks and opportunities, empowering clients to make informed decisions. It pulls team-members into the process when appropriate, in a centralized location, ensuring that tasks get done on time. We measure our success on client success, and Occupier increases the chances of positive outcomes for our clients,” noted JLL managing director Bryan Sparkes.
