What is PropTech?
Definition
PropTech, also known as CRE tech or real estate technology, refers to a range of technologies changing the way professionals research, rent, buy, and manage properties.
Why it Matters
PropTech investment has increased from merely $20 million in 2010 to over $12.6 billion in 2017. There are a wide range of solutions included under the PropTech umbrella including: equipment performance tracking and insights, digital dashboards, research & analytics, listing services/tech-enabled brokerages, mobile applications, residential & commercial lending, 3D-modeling for online portals, crowdfunding real estate projects, shared spaces management, as well as organizing, analyzing, and extracting key data from lengthy rental documents.
Generally, the focus of PropTech is to make real estate companies more efficient. Historically, real estate companies have been managed in a manual, relationship-driven manner. More recently, real estate companies have adapted long-term core strategies due to increased penetration of technology. In fact, some believe that all real estate technologies are technology companies, whether they recognize it today or not. For example, real estate companies are deploying smart building technologies at a massive scale either through purchasing, investing, or partnering with technology companies.