Implementing innovation in real estate development : co-living as an innovative product

The real estate industry is very conservative and risk averse, yet innovation is critical to its long term viability. While innovation does occur in real estate development, it is often discouraged and not the standard approach. This thesis focuses on understanding the motivations and obstacles facing real estate developers who decide to pursue innovative products, processes and systems. The study explores the challenges of developing co-living, a recent innovative real estate product in order to understand why this product is taking off across the country, and how it has been implemented in Boston and New York City. Insight into the innovation processes are derived from site visits and multiple interviews with professionals from different sectors of real estate: developers, consultants and regulatory authorities. The thesis concludes by describing five principles of innovative real estate development, relating to: Market Demand, Vision, Adoption, External Forces and X-Factors. While these principles are derived from experience in creating co-living projects, they are illustrative and important for the innovation process in all types of real estate products.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Real Estate. Program in Real Estate Development.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2018

Author dc:creator

• Drobnis, David S

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dennis Frenchman.

• Center for Real Estate. Program in Real Estate Development.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/120656

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/120656