Former Head Of Global Real Estate At CBRE Joins Proptech Firm Density

A proptech firm with a product tailored to the prevailing office real estate question of the day has made a splashy hire.

Peter Van Emburgh has joined Density as head of industry strategy, the company announced in a letter on its website from CEO and co-founder Andrew Farah published on Tuesday. Van Emburgh had been CBRE's global head of corporate real estate, managing the commercial real estate services firm's own office footprint.

Van Emburgh was a Density customer in his capacity as CBRE's real estate head, Farah said in his letter, which also announced the launch of a new offering from the company called Portfolio. Portfolio offers Density customers the ability to monitor the actual usage of their offices across multiple locations, and the idea for it germinated from a conversation with Van Emburgh in the fall when he was still with CBRE, Farah said.

"With Portfolio, users have learned that they've opened 1,000-person buildings to see just 1% show up," Farah said in the letter. "On the other hand, users have seen buildings that are officially closed achieve unintended utilization rates as high at 28%."

Actual usage of offices is a point of concern for companies as coronavirus vaccinations continue to roll out, forcing more long-term decisions about in-person versus remote work and the amount of square footage needed if some form of hybrid strategy is used. 

Density, which was founded in 2014 and whose customers manage more than 1B SF, also announced in a press release on Tuesday that it has raised an additional $25M in capital from previous investors, bringing its total investment to date past the $100M mark.