POWER TECHNOLOGY
Will PropTech Change the Homebuying Experience in 2022?
I
f anything, the pandemic highlighted, is how much the real estate industry needed new technologies to make things more flexible.
Property Technology (proptech) is one of the tech trends slowly permeating into real esttae business model. While there were remarkable advances that were already being made in this area, the pandemic induced shutdowns changed the way people interacted and lived leading to some rapid advancements designed to change the consumer’s perspectives and needs. Going into 2022, it is likely that more investments will be happening around oftware surrounding the construction and how property is managed. I think these are the two sectors that remain unexplored and were actually the areas that stood out for investment within proptech in 2021. In addition, it is highly likely that we’ll be seeing more consolidation in the industry more companies reach maturity while others are looking for exits and not to forget many of which will be looking to rejuvenate their models to accommodate progressive technologies. In order for proptech to flourish, there are multiple factors in the macroeconomic environment that must co-exist harmoniously including the shift in institutional investors buying single family homes. One of the trend we are seeing is renting is becoming more common, and with a good reason. Many people 18 | FEBRUARY 2022
cannot afford homes and inflation is on the rise. The more people are renting homes from certain institutions like Blackstone, this makes it possible for investment in different types of technologies. The fact that interest rates are also so low, this makes real estate investment as an asset class that many investors can get a decent yield on.
“Institutions are interested in real estate, and that means that technology will have to follow,” according to Lauren Weston, an associate at Thomvest Ventures. CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY within the construction industry, tech mainly is embedded in finance, project management tech (software) and home improvement (smart homes etc.) advancements in this area are likely to gain momentum and become potential areas for investment this year. The venturebacked construction tech startups were able to raise more than $3.8 billion in funding last year according to data by Crunchbase. When looking at these areas of investment individually, you begin to uncover a web of potentiality for the real estate industry. For instance, embedded in finance, the technology that allows ease of payments (online and offline), we see a big theme where fintech is already taking roots within the braod spectrum of Proptech. This year, Fintech will dominate construction tech especially when you begin
