Demystifying the Property Tech landscape
The largest asset class
Real Estate is the largest asset class. To get a grasp on just how huge it is: the global equity market capitalization is valued at $70.1 trillion. The global bond market is topping out at $92.2 trillion. Real estate is a whopping $217 trillion — making it the world’s most important asset class.
And as a result real estate has a very wide ecosystem that encompasses many sub-ecosystems. Hence, it is hard to make sense of this sprawling space. This article is my attempt to make sense of this ecosystem.
What is Property Tech?
PropTech, is the term used to describe the broad application of technology to real estate markets. It refers to the myriad tech companies working to transform the real estate industry, based on a rapidly changing digital landscape and ever-shifting consumption trends and patterns.
PropTech often overlaps with FinTech, which refers to financial technology startups that use innovative digital methods to provide financial services.
Property Tech can be divided into two big segments:
Residential landscape:
Residential real estate consists of places where people live, either owner-occupied or rented to tenants. Common asset types of residential real estate include, single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums etc.
Commercial landscape:
Commercial real estate consists of places where people do business. Property can be owner-occupied, such as a corner fast food outlet or bank branch, or be rented to commercial tenants, such as a multi-tenant shopping center.
Residential Landscape
Nima Wedlake from Thomvest Ventures came up with defining the proptech landscape for both residential and commercial real estate. Here is their graphic visualization:
Commercial Landscape
However, in Nima’s proptech market map, I found missing the investors players like REITs. I asked him a question on Twitter:
However, I found PropTechZone which had a more exhaustive landscape map that included REITs too.
Alternative Landscape by PropTechZone
Folks from PropTechZone have also done a great job in making sense of the landscape in an altered format.
They break it down to four pillars:
Invest & finance
Plan & Build
Buy, Sell & Rent
Manage & Operate
Invest & Finance
Under invest & finance, we have:
Alternative Financing
Data & Valuation
Debt Crowdfunding
Equity Crowdfunding
Home Insurance
Plan & Build
Advanced Building Methods
Construction Marketplaces
Green Building
On-Site Execution
Planning & Design Tools
Prefab Building
Safety & Training
Smart Buildings
Buy, Sell & Rent
Agent Tools & Services
Commercial Search
Home Search
iBuyer
Other Space Search
Tech-Enabled Brokerage
Title & Escrow
Transaction Management
Travel & Vacation Search
Virtual Tours
Other Space Search
Manage & Operate
Brandboxing
Energy Management
Flexible Workplace & Coworking
Indoor Navigation
Leasing & Asset Management
NextGen Hospitality
NextGen Rentals & Coliving
Property Management
Smart Home
Tenant Experience
I hope you found the maiden post on proptechlessons valuable.
In the future posts, I will demystify each of these building blocks of proptech one after another.