GARBE and Futury Promote Technology and Finance Innovations for the Real Estate Industry

News 14/07/2026

• reperks and Christoph Ehler granted the first stipends of the “Futury Vordenker Fellowship powered by GARBE“
• Their projects automate service charge settlements using AI and develop machine-learning models for real estate appraisals, respectively
• In addition to financial grants, winning fellows get twelve months of executive mentoring by GARBE and access to the Futury innovation ecosystem

 

Hamburg, 14 July 2026 – GARBE, a Hamburg-based real estate and infrastructure company, and Futury, one of Germany’s leading start-up factories, just announced the first recipients of the “Futury Vordenker Fellowship powered by GARBE” through their joint sponsorship program on occasion of the GARBE Vordenker Conference 2026. The fellows chosen are Timon Ivens and Robin Lais, the start-up founders of reperks, and Christoph Ehler. Ehler is a doctoral student at the Technical University of Darmstadt and works at the Real Estate Institute of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. reperks is developing an AI agent for the automation of service charge settlements. Christoph Ehler is working on a machine-learning model for the automated property valuation and price forecasting. Both projects impressed the jury members with their great potential for the real estate industry.

The selected fellows will receive a grant over a total amount of 10,000 euros along with executive mentoring by GARBE experts over a twelve-month period. In addition, fellows are integrated into Futury’s innovation ecosystem.

“The two award-winning projects provide compelling solutions for several challenges facing the real estate industry. reperks is developing a technologically innovative approach to the compilation of service charge settlements whereas Christoph Ehler is working on new ways to support data-driven decisions in real estate development. Our objective is to facilitate the further evolution of these projects and to prepare their widespread practical application,” said Thomas Kallenbrunnen, Managing Director of GARBE Capital & Strategy and of GARBE Infrastructure.

Melissa Ott, Managing Director at Futury, added: “The name of the Vordenker Fellowship captures the essence of the program’s aspiration: Our intention is to sponsor outstanding talent whose ideas promise advances for the real estate and construction industry. In reperks and Christoph Ehler, we are nurturing talent with significant entrepreneurial potential, and, together with GARBE, help them in their efforts to translate their ideas into scalable solutions for the real estate sector.”

Using AI to Make Service Charge Settlements More Efficient

The reperks team is developing an AI agent that will largely automate the entire process of tallying service charges, from invoice receipt all the way to dispute management. While the current process often requires the successive involvement of several departments, the AI agent handles standard scenarios on its own, submitting only complex cases to actual staff members for review. A few major property managers are already testing the solution in a trial run.

“Our AI agent enables property companies and property managers to compile service charge settlements via a largely automated process that takes mere minutes. For the time being, we focus primarily on the residential sector,” said Robin Lais, co-founder of reperks. Timon Ivens, co-founder of reperks, added: “The plausible next step for us will be to deploy our software in the commercial sector. In GARBE, we have the perfect partner for gathering first experiences in the segments of logistics real estate and neighbourhood retail real estate, and to keep developing the solution further in a joint effort.”

Using Machine Learning to Make Property Valuations More Objective

Meanwhile, Christoph Ehler is developing a machine-learning model for automated property valuations and for price forecasting. With the help of big data, appraising real estate is to become more objective while identification of the value-determining factors is to become easier. This way, Ehler’s model is meant to facilitate property development, transactions management and portfolio management.

“Many decisions in the real estate industry continue to be dominated by experience and gut instinct. My aim is to embed data-driven tools more firmly in the real estate industry. The fellowship will enable me to take the scientific approach behind my model and put it to practical use. And that is exactly what my goal was all along,” said Ehler.