MREN
Comprehensive Collaboration Technologies for the Real Estate Market

The U.S. Commercial Real Estate (CRE) industry is estimated to be worth $15 trillion and is widely recognized as one of the last major industries to adopt technology. It is extremely relationship driven and information intensive. Every deal is unique, every decision is subjective, every sector has its own considerations, and every workflow is proprietary, which drives competitive advantages for the players. As such, unlike other industries, the concept of standardization will not work.

One of the biggest challenge that CRE faces is fragmentation of people, process and information, and yet it is still extremely collaborative. For any transaction to be successful, it requires collaboration from a team of internal and external professionals from multiple disciplines, which may involve upwards of 15 to 30 people at different stages of the investment life cycle. The network of participants involved is exclusive to each individual deal and persists throughout the entire holding period, typically lasting three to seven years. Almost all players actively participate in multiple transactions simultaneously, thus multiplying the network complexities. Until recently, everyone has relied on email as the sole medium to share information and communicate. Relying on email is not only inefficient; it loses valuable relationship and behavioral data.

Founded in 2013, Metis Real Estate Network (MREN) is the first enterprise collaboration network solution to modernize the industry.

It enables the creation of private networks on deal and organizational levels by centralizing information exchange and streamlining communication, effectively maximizing collaboration. MREN further provides interconnectivity between the private networks, which will ultimately become the industry’s master network.

“Commercial Real Estate is not a commodity and thus cannot and should not be commoditized or standardized. Because it is both human capital and information intensive, technology can make the greatest impact by providing the ability for professionals and organizations to collaborate more efficiently while respecting the unique nature of the business. This was the genesis of MREN," says Joy Hou, Co-founder and CEO of MREN.

MREN combines the best elements of proven technologies that exist to managing people, process, information, and communication. It is a comprehensive collaboration platform to support CRE investments throughout their life cycle-origination, management, and exit. One of MREN’s key features is MRooms, or virtual collaboration rooms. MRooms are created on a deal level where all participants can share information and communicate. In addition, other “connected” MRooms can be created to address specific disciplines that only involve a subset of participants and information. Participants can chat on a real time basis and share files, with information accessibility strictly controlled by administrative permissioning. MRooms not only eliminate the need to rely on email or multiple document management accounts, they also preserve intelligence on a long term basis and minimizes the need to repeatedly aggregate and send the same information to different participants at different stages.

Most professionals indicate that they waste a third of their time searching, sharing, requesting, discussing, and aggregating the same information repetitively.

Commercial Real Estate is not a commodity and thus cannot and should not be commoditized or standardized. Because it is both human capital and information intensive, technology can make the greatest impact by providing the ability for professionals and organizations to collaborate more efficiently while respecting the unique nature of the business

In Joy’s words, “By providing an effective collaboration solution, MREN will recoup 30 percent of time spend in the CRE investment process. Saving time means the ability to do more deals and gain more relationships.”

In terms of collaboration technologies, the solutions offered by MREN are among the best in the market. MREN’s solutions are impacting all types of real estate professionals and organizations in the commercial real estate industry regardless to the sector, size, geography or strategies of their real estate holdings.