Real Estate & Construction News Round-Up – January 2022 #2 | Pillsbury – Gravel2Gavel Construction & Real Estate Law

China’s real estate market continues to struggle, Biden’s infrastructure development plans for the US include rehabilitation versus sweeping national expansion, the value proposition of real estate in the Metaverse is being questioned, and more.

• The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed in November 2021, will focus more on refurbishing US infrastructure than launching large-scale development projects. (Jonathan English, Bloomberg)
• One of China’s healthiest real estate developers, Shimao Group, has reportedly defaulted, signaling further trouble for the country’s debt-ridden real estate market. (Evelyn Cheng, CNBC)
• Building material costs rose dramatically throughout 2021, causing projects to be re-tendered and companies closed, but for the first time since September 2020, statistics released by the Department for Enterprise, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) show that the prices have flattened. (Joshua Stein, Construction News)
• Alasco, the cloud-based financial management platform for real estate projects that enables clients to connect data such as budgets, costs, revenues and ESG criteria with automated technology, has raised $40 million in Series B financing. (PYMNTS)
• The proptech industry remains speculative about the future of buying and selling real estate in the Metaverse, questioning how value would realistically be created and grown in such a virtual environment. (Philip Russo, economic observer)

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