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Architectural models and VR fall under the wide-ranging "proptech" umbrella.
- Three top venture capital investors in proptech, Fifth Wall, MetaProp and Trinity Ventures, talked to Business Insider about opportunities and challenges.
- The VCs talked about working with a slower-moving industry and the hype around virtual reality and blockchain.
- Investors see an opportunity in high-quality services startups that don't own actual real estate.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Proptech is quickly gaining ground on fintech in terms of hype and investment dollars. Investors and startups say that now is the time for the real estate industry to start adopting new technology, or "proptech," that will make companies work more efficiently.
Proptech is a broad and sometimes vague term, but a good working definition is right there in the name: technology that's related to the sale, rental, maintenance, and improvement of property.
That can include online real estate marketplaces and "iBuyers" like Zillow, Opendoor, Redfin, and Compass as well as some of the more behind-the-scenes tools that landlords and property managers can use to maintain and monetize their real estate. Some people might also include coworking companies like WeWork, short-term rentals like AirBnb and Sonder, the tech underpinning smart cities like Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs, and sustainable construction techniques under the proptech umbrella.
There are equally wide-ranging views of how large the industry is. Proptech data company Unissu pegged total VC funding at $14.85 billion for 2018, while Re:Tech estimated a total of $18.6 billion.
Business Insider spoke to two proptech-focused VCs, Fifth Wall and MetaProp, and one generalist VC with experience in proptech, Trinity Ventures, about the opportunities and challenges in identifying proptech investments.