5 cool civic startups on display at the 2015 Congress of Cities

OpportunitySpace

Philadelphia pays more than $20 million annually to maintain vacant lots and homes, according to Andrew Kieve, the co-founder of online real estate marketplace OpportunitySpace. His group helps cities, like Philadelphia, identify abandoned properties and work with developers to help the spaces get sold.

Working with a team of creative spacemakers and developers, OpportunitySpace gathers data on properties throughout the city and feeds it into an open source, public-facing map, Kieve said. From there, OpportunitySpace works with real estate developers to encourage them to invest in abandoned properties to help revitalize areas of the cities. Properties then evolve into retail spaces or apartments. His group helps the cities work with developers to facilitate direct sales, requests for proposal, auctions, requests for information or tax sales.

“We believe every part of real estate has value,” Kieve said.