A North American PropTech View with Adam Sharif, nxtCRE

Welcome to ‘A North American PropTech View, by Tabitha Francis’ our Q&A focused on North American PropTech’s.

Our Q&A series is an opportunity for our North American team to discuss all things PropTech, Start-ups, and Career with different founders from across the region. Each week we will ask PropTech innovators burning questions and quiz them about their product, we hope you find it insightful and enjoy getting to know the founders as much as we have.

This week we have been in touch with Adam Sharif, CEO and Co-Founder of nxtCRE.

nxtCRE is Private Equity funded Open-Banking CRE fintech platform. In an exclusive partnership with CRE lenders across the nation, we collect the immediate exchange needs of Tens of Thousands of Must-Buy Investors and provide to those who have CRE listings, an early, easy, efficient, and free access to those investors.

How did you find yourself working in the PropTech sector?

My background is in CRE capital markets. I was a member of the Senior Management Committee at GMAC-CM and ran the Equity Transaction Market. We at that time had a servicing portfolio of over $300B. Many of our borrowers who were selling their properties and wanted to reinvest the cash from the sale to acquire another property were challenged by finding the right opportunity within a very short time as required by the 1031 exchange rules.

The biggest challenge we had in helping our borrowers was the lack of efficiently gathering and  communicating information. With today’s technology, we have an ability to communicate information at lighting speed which will allow us to create greater efficiency and transparency for the $400B/year exchange acquisition market.

How does your value proposition differentiate you from other companies operating in a similar sphere?

There is no one today doing what we’re doing. In fact, other than technology making more places available for MBI to look for opportunities, the model of searching many places to find the right opportunity within a very short time, has been the same for 100s of years. It’s even more so true for property sellers. Unless a broker brings them a MBI, there is no place for them to go and find MBIs. Because of our capabilities of providing sellers a platform where they can go and find multiple MBI for their properties, we can help them reduce marketing time and costs.

What challenges are you facing within the real estate landscape in the current climate?

The current climate, which is raising rates and less capital available then what has been the case in recent years has increased the value of our services. For property sellers, today’s market creates uncertainty and providing greater certainty is what MBI offer.

What does the next year hold for your company? What are your expansion plans?

Our plan for the next year is to increase our list of lender partners. We’re actively recruiting talented people to our lender liaison team. Building brand awareness is part of that plan.

Future of PropTech in North America- what do you think is going to be important this year?

Not an export on all things pro-tech. Most pro-tech today are solving operational/management issues. nxtCRE mostly straddles the PropTech and FinTech.

What advice would you give to someone looking to enter the PropTech industry?

If they’re in CRE capital markets, we encourage and advise them consider joining nxtCRE.

What are your thoughts about the current fundraising landscape in PropTech? 

We’re not an expert PropTech fundraising. Although we’ve been founder funded, we recently accepted an offer to invest in nxtCRE from a private equity firm that will provide a strategy in helping us sign more lenders.