Innovator Of The Year: Cresa Director Stephanie Bujwit

Cresa’s Stephanie Bujwit is a cancer survivor. She describes herself as a fighter who came back to the industry with new motivation to push her career forward.

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Bisnow interviewed five of the 24 honorees at the upcoming Chicago Women Leading Real Estate event, one in each of five award categories, to learn more about the projects they have taken pride in, the advice they have to offer other women, and the trends and innovations that most excite them. 

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. 

Bisnow: Can you share a deal, project or initiative you've worked on recently that you're particularly proud of?

Bujwit:

The biggest thing I'm proud of is the development of our technology platform and business intelligence tool, Valo. I wanted to build a tool and start with more predictive analytics, and then eventually get to the point where we can be prescriptive by utilizing AI and machine learning tools to really enhance that. We're constantly hearing from clients that this is a game-changer. It's very different. It looks and feels different. We're open to more customization than that of our competitors. So I feel like we are changing the way in which clients are receiving information, and we're changing the way in which they are interacting with technology.

Bisnow: What is one piece of advice you'd give to women looking to make an impact in real estate today?

Bujwit:

This is a very male-driven industry, and there is some hardship to deal with when dealing with individuals in this industry, especially males. Oftentimes we're utilized as resources. When brought into an organization, typically we're put into either a research team or an analyst team, which I would use to their leverage, because often advisers are brought in and put right into brokerage. My recommendation would be to understand every single service line and what they're offering so that you can be a powerhouse when you start to get clients on board.

Bisnow: What trends or innovations in real estate are exciting you the most right now, and how do you think they'll shape the industry?

Bujwit:

Definitely artificial intelligence and machine learning. I think the biggest challenge with that is the data structure. Historically, leases are all written differently. There's no standardization with nomenclature for commercial real estate. There's a lot of acronyms for commercial real estate, so getting to understand those and being able to clean up the data enough to really provide actionable insights will be interesting. We're in the process right now of collecting all of our various datasets that we subscribe to, putting it together and really creating actionable intelligence across the entire platform. 

Bisnow: What's the most significant challenge facing Chicago's real estate market right now, and how do you see that challenge evolving over the next few years? 

Bujwit:

There's a lot of vacancy, which is a real problem when landlords have to refinance or sell the building. They can't do it because the underwriters just are not seeing the numbers there. So it is causing a lot of defaults and a lot of angst from landlords. I think there's going to be some conversion of C-Class space. They're going to be looking into more residential-style conversions, also maybe into hotels or amenity centers, things like that. 

View the full article and additional interviews on Bisnow.