On September 22, 2021, our CEO, Dirk Paelinck, delivered the keynote address of the greatest real estate conference in Belgium, namely the Realty 2021 Summit – alongside Prof. Rudy Aernoudt, Senior Economist, Chief Economist Team of the European Commission, and Xavier Troussard, Head of the New European Bauhaus Unit – Joint Research Centre at the European Commission.
Interoffices and Workero are proud to have been structural partners at this event, where real estate industry experts and professionals connected and deliberated on the exciting possibilities that the future of real estate holds.
During the keynote address, our speakers discussed European PropTech, the EU Green Deal, and the new European Bauhaus.
According to the speakers, the forthcoming legislation from the European Green Deal will create stringent measures imposed on all actors in the real estate industry. For the European Commission, PropTech will lead the way in reaching the goals of the EU Climate Law. At the same time, a set of brand new financing mechanisms have been designed and implemented to assist in the digital transformation of real estate.
On top of the implications of the European Green Deal, is the added layer of the New European Bauhaus: an environmental, economic, and cultural project, aiming to combine design, sustainability, accessibility, affordability, and investment to help bring about the European Green Deal. The core values driving the New European Bauhaus project are sustainability, aesthetics, and inclusiveness.
We are already witnessing some of the fruits of these combined impetuses: as it stands, Europe has the richest and pioneering PropTech ecosystem in the world. Currently, there are 3134 European Proptech startups and scale-ups that are carving out and defining the future of real estate.
In addition, our speakers answered questions such as why Europe has become the PropTech market leader worldwide, what the implications of the Green Deal are for European PropTech, how the growth of the PropTech innovators and the EU Green Deal is financed, what the dynamics of the PropTech market looks like in Europe and the world, and how you can benefit from the financing mechanisms of the European Commission.
The keynote framed and connected the summit’s various related topics that ranged from sustainable wood construction, the 15-minute city, sustainable cities, asset management, alternative financing in real estate, the social impact of real estate, affordable housing, to the post-Covid office.
Finally, the keynote session was followed by what was arguably one of the most important events on the European Proptech Calendar: the 2021 PropTech Startup and Scale-up Europe Awards competition. The ten finalists of the biggest competition in proptech pitched live before a jury of 70 judges, and a winner was finally selected. Read more about this event here.