Propmodo Technology

Greetings,

Commercial real estate firms have spent years becoming more digital, more connected, and more data-driven. That has made them faster and more efficient, but it has also turned them into very attractive targets. A brokerage or property management platform is no longer just holding lease files and contact lists. It is holding a map of relationships, financial exposure, tenant identities, building access, vendor networks, and deal activity. For cybercriminals, that is not boring back-office data. It is a business model.

The recent Cushman & Wakefield incident is a useful warning because the reported entry point was not some exotic piece of malware. It was a phone call. That should make every CRE executive a little uncomfortable. The industry tends to think of cybersecurity as something solved by stronger software, better firewalls, or whatever the IT team recommends at budget time. But the weak point is often a person being pressured, tricked, or rushed into giving access to a system that already contains everything an attacker needs.

What makes this moment different is that CRE’s cyber risk is starting to look a lot like its legal, insurance, and reputational risk. One exposed CRM can trigger client notification issues, class-action claims, insurance questions, and uncomfortable conversations with tenants and investors. The lesson from Cushman is not simply that one large firm got hit. It is that the basic operating model of modern real estate now depends on data systems that many companies still treat as administrative plumbing. That posture is getting harder to defend.

Let’s go!

🤌 Italian connection
CoStar Group has acquired a roughly 30% stake in Wikicasa, an agent-backed real estate marketplace in Italy with more than 600,000 property listings. The deal extends CoStar's global marketplace footprint into one of Europe's largest property markets, combining Wikicasa's local agency network and market expertise with CoStar's technology platform and international reach. As an initial step, the two companies plan to surface Wikicasa's commercial listings on LoopNet, giving Italian properties broader visibility with a global audience of commercial real estate buyers and tenants. The investment reflects CoStar's broader strategy of partnering with established local platforms rather than building from scratch in new markets, a playbook it has executed previously in Australia with Domain and in the United Kingdom with OnTheMarket.

📈 Buying growth
Dwelly has acquired Settio, an international property management and investment services firm with clients across 17 countries and offices in Manchester, Birmingham, London, and Singapore, marking the company's seventh acquisition of 2026 and its first move beyond the UK market. The deal adds over 2,000 fully managed properties to Dwelly's portfolio, bringing its total properties under management to an estimated 14,000 and further cementing its position as one of the UK's largest lettings businesses.

🛢️ Data demand
As data center backlash spreads across the country, the California Resources Corporation is betting that siting a 600,000-square-foot data center campus inside its Elk Hills oil field will sidestep community opposition by keeping it more than a mile from the nearest homes on land already zoned for heavy industry. The project is part of a growing trend of locating data centers near oil and gas fields, which offer underutilized power infrastructure. For CRC, which has been diversifying into carbon capture as California phases out fossil fuels, the data center represents a way to generate revenue from a declining asset while creating jobs and tax revenue in a county where oil employment has fallen by half since 2015.

Propmodo Technology is edited by Franco Faraudo with contributions from readers like you and the Propmodo team.

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