Connect with us

Business

Full Steam Ahead for Washington, DC-area Real Estate Investors

Published

on

The Washington DC real estate market had a record-breaking summer season, despite Covid-19 restrictions. In July 2020, the average listing price of a home in the DC area reached a ten-year high, setting a 13% increase from 2019.  In other words, if last year you purchased a property for $200K, today you will have almost 27K in additional equity. Your net worth will be 27K higher just by going with the flow and enjoying the appreciation the DMV area has to offer

If you are a rehabber flipping homes for profit, you are not just going with the flow. The name of the game is to put a home under contract with a price that is below market and to build substantial equity by renovating it. As Maryland hard money lenders, we have a fast and hard rule for our clients: do not count on appreciation when determining the after-repair value of your deal. The additional profits you make due to that appreciation is gravy on top of the sweat equity you build by rehabbing a dilapidated home.

Still, the annual appreciation our area enjoys is a tremendous tailwind. It’s also unique to our area.

The DC-area real estate market, remarkably, experiences such tailwind year after year, pandemic be damned. It has been displaying appreciation for the last ten years, with the average prices rising from $374,000 in July 2010 to a mind-blowing $470,000 in 2020.

This year, the record appreciation rates are, at least to some extent, are the result of the limited supply of homes on the market. We are fortunate to live, work, and invest in the affluent market. Many households have levels of savings to weather financial storms or have dependable federal and state government jobs. Instead of dropping their asking prices at first sight of the market instability, they would better remove their listing to wait till more opportune times.

It is what has happened when the Coronavirus lockdown measures first hit out area in March 2020. Uncertain of its impact on the economy, sellers held off on listing their properties, reducing the already limited supply. Yet, for a brief time, the demand has also dwindled as buyers, especially real estate investors, eyed the market wearily. For sellers who had to sell at the height of uncertainty, the only way to do it was to lower their prices.

A number of real estate investors had enough faith in the stability of the DC real estate to put properties under contract past spring. As a result of their risk-tolerance, they were able to snatch some incredible deals. Unsurprisingly, the majority of those deals came from the wholesale channel. The wholesalers had to reassign the contracts and, since few willing investors were available, were forced to offer deep discounts. Yet, that pause was a brief anomolity in an otherwise bustling and healthy market. By summer 2020, the DC real estate market picked up the pace by 7%. The new listings were are up by more than 20%. Real estate investing also keeps up its face. “We had an increased demand for our loans,” – says Kyle Sennott, Managing Partner at New Funding Resources, a private lender who works with real estate investors in the DC area. “While many conventional and hard money lenders tightened their guidelines or paused lending, we are going full-steam ahead.”

Dan Smith is probably best known for his writing skill, which was adapted into news articles. He earned degree in Literature from Chicago University. He published his first book while an English instructor. After that he published 8 books in his career. He has more than six years’ experience in publication. And now he works as a writer of news on Apsters Media website which is related to news analysis from entertainment and technology industry.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Business

Wiz will pay $450 million to acquire Cloud Remediation Startup Dazz

Published

on

Wiz revealed on Thursday that it will buy channel-focused company Dazz in an agreement to add cloud remediation capabilities to the vendor’s cloud and AI security platform.

With features like application security posture management and continuous threat and exposure management, Dazz provides a remediation-focused cloud security platform.

Jared Phipps, a seasoned cybersecurity industry executive who most recently worked for SentinelOne, was hired by Dazz in February as its CRO as the business sought to expand its collaboration with channel partners. Presidio, situated in New York, has been one of the key partners.

Dazz said in July that it has raised a $50 million round of funding, increasing its total funding since its 2021 launch to $110 million.

Dazz provides a “industry-leading remediation engine,” according to a post published on Thursday by Wiz Co-Founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, which will allow Wiz to “empower security teams to correlate data from multiple sources and manage application risks in one unified platform.”

This is Wiz’s third purchase overall and its second acquisition of 2024 after the company’s April acquisition of cloud detection and response provider Gem Security.

Wiz, a four-year-old startup, reported in May that it had raised $1 billion in new capital at a $12 billion valuation, citing its continued strong development in the cloud and AI security areas. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) for the business reportedly increased from $350 million earlier this year to above $500 million.

After making a number of management additions aimed at facilitating quicker partner-driven growth, Rappaport stated in February that Wiz would prioritize its channel operations moving ahead.

I“In cybersecurity partners are super, super important in the success of a company. So we’ve always [seen that] this has huge potential for us to tap into. I think there is so much more we can do,” he stated at the time.

Continue Reading

Business

ProRata, an AI startup, Teams up with UK Publishers after reportedly Hitting $130 Million in Valuation

Published

on

A number of well-known British media outlets have joined ProRata, an AI firm that claims to compensate publishers for the usage of their work, in its expanding network of partnerships.

The Los Angeles-based firm announced on Wednesday that it has signed licensing deals with publishers such as Sky News, the Guardian, and the Daily Mail’s publisher, DMG Media.

In a recent Series A funding round, ProRata raised $25 million from investors such as the Mayfield Fund, Prime Movers Lab, and Revolution Ventures.

“ProRata’s founder and CEO Bill Gross said his firm’s AI technology is the only one that pledges to credit and compensate creators, while providing users with accurate search results.

“We have had hundreds of content owners and media companies reach out to us from around the world who are interested in piloting our technology. Stealing and scraping content is not a sustainable path forward,” he continued.

Similar alliances have previously been formed by ProRata with the German publisher Axel Springer, the Atlantic, Fortune, Time, and Universal Music Group (UMG).

Media firms are offered reasonable compensation by ProRata for the use of their content. The startup’s in-house technology may determine the proper amount of pay by evaluating the worth of the information used to create responses from an AI platform. This would make it possible to pay copyright holders for their work on a per-use basis.

Gross had previously said that AI platforms have been using “shoplifted, plagiarized content,” which fosters an atmosphere in which “disinformation thrives and creators get nothing.”

Gross is recognized for having created the pay-per-click model of internet search monetization with his business, GoTo.com, which was eventually acquired by Yahoo! in 2003.

In a recent blog post, Tige Savage, a cofounder of Revolution, stated that Bill Gross is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in monetization techniques.

“He’s attracted a world-class tech team led by AI luminary Tarek Najm to implement the vision and an accomplished business team, including Annelies Jansen and Jonas Lee to drive content and AI partnerships,” Savage continued.

The unpaid use of copyrighted materials by OpenAI and other tech companies to train their AI systems has led to litigation from media companies and other content creators.

Continue Reading

Business

Film Bazaar Unveils an Interactive Cinema App from an Indian Tech Startup

Published

on

Arjun Nittoor, the founder of the Indian technology firm Vireza, disclosed at Film Bazaar that the company is creating a new mobile application that would transform the experience of watching movies in theaters by enabling viewers to engage with the films in real time.

The technology, which was created wholly in-house at the company’s research and development department in Bengaluru, allows viewers to use their smartphones to vote on important plot points during the movie. To keep up with the current screening, patrons download an app before entering the theater and scan a QR code at their seat.

“The film industry is one of the few sectors where the audience experience has seen minimal technological disruption in theatres,” Nittoor stated. “While screen and sound quality have advanced and 3D has been partially adopted, the viewing experience has largely remained the same for decades.”

The screen automatically brightens to show voting options and dims again when choices are made. The system uses discreet phone notifications to encourage audience participation around every ten minutes.

In 2026, Vireza intends to introduce the technology with a full-length interactive movie that will be produced in both English and South Indian for international distribution. The business is presently in the development stage and will shortly start doing multiplex chain trial screenings.

CtrlMovie’s prior success in the interactive film industry was mentioned by Nittoor. CtrlMovie is well-known for “Traces of Responsibility” and “Late Shift.”

In order to overcome the difficulties in cinematography, editing, shot composition, and writing that plagued previous attempts at the format, the firm has spent five years creating what Nittoor refers to as “a new science of filmmaking” that is especially tailored for interactive cinema.

“Despite the proliferation of viewing devices, big-ticket films continue to draw massive crowds to theatres, with box office numbers higher than ever,”  Nittoor stated. “This demand underscores the potential for a meaningful technology shift that could draw audiences out of their homes and into cinemas.”

Other Asian businesses are likewise investigating audience-driven narrative in motion pictures. In February of the following year, Japan’s King Records intends to release “Hypnosis Mic – Division Rap Battle,” an animated interactive film.

Continue Reading

Trending

error: Content is protected !!