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Betting on the Data Boom: Real Estate Technology Investments Explained

Matthew Wenman

Director, Global Real Estate Securities, Brookfield Public Securities Group

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Stewart Reid

Director, Intermediary Distribution, Western Canada

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The data boom is here. With it increasingly becoming easier to share information between devices, we’re producing, transmitting, and collecting data more rapidly than ever before. The news of this data boom and escalating consumption of data might peak your client’s interest in technology companies that are household names, like their favourite streaming service or innovative car brand. While there’s value in investing in the technological advancements that are directly driving this rise in data consumption, it’s valuable to evaluate where the secular tailwinds are being felt as well. Enter – real estate technology.

At face value, it sounds simple. Your client knows what real estate is. Your client knows what technology is. But together, real estate technology can be described as the infrastructure that enables all the amazing tech and data that we consume everyday. As non-traditional assets, the space makes for an interesting solution to diversify one’s asset mix, but the advantage isn’t readily obvious. At the end of the day, investing in real estate technology means benefiting from the data phenomenon regardless of who’s coming out on top as the industry-leader in their tech space, which means less volatility for the investor.

We spoke with James Rockwood, CEO of CapIntel, to discuss the new BMO Brookfield Global Real Estate Tech Fund, a solution offered as a mutual fund and as an ETF (TOWR). The fund gives investors exposure to a concentrated portfolio of global securities in the following sectors:

The 3 Real Estate Technology Sectors

  • Industrial. These are the commercial properties that support logistics for e-commerce, like logistical centres for mail providers.
  • Communications Infrastructure. These are the mobile towers that transmit the signals from our mobile devices.
  • Data Centres. These properties, whether rented or owned by companies, house the servers that store data and the computations that allow us to use it (for example, streaming, e-mails, video-calling, etc.).

This fund aims to provide the benefits of investing in real estate, like inflation protection, low correlation with other asset classes, and moderate income. It also will provide the diversification benefit sought from bonds. To help conceptualize the strategy for your client, it’s important to distinguish that the fund isn’t about buying buildings – it’s about investing in best-in-class public companies and listed securities within these sectors.

To hear more about trends in the real estate technology space as well as practical ways to position the BMO Brookfield Global Real Estate Tech Fund to your clients, listen to the podcast episode: Betting on the Data Boom Using Real Estate Tech, with BMO Global Asset Management on the Frontier of Finance, a podcast by CapIntel. This episode features guests Matthew Wenman, Director on the Public Securities Group’s Real Estate Securities team from Brookfield Asset Management, and Stewart Reid, Director of Intermediary Distribution in Western Canada from BMO Global Asset Management

This podcast presentation is for informational purposes only.

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