Real estate was long overdue for an overhaul.
Until recently, many processes that governed how physical spaces traded hands or were managed - not just buying, selling, and renting homes but also overseeing office towers and organizing warehouses - were only conducted via in-person deals or negotiations.
But a crop of companies focusing on real-estate technology, colloquially known as known as proptech, has emerged to modernize segments of the industry.
Take Beyond HQ, a San Francisco-based firm that harnesses proprietary technology to advise Bay Area companies when and where they should open new office locations. Then there's MeetElise, an artificial-intelligence assistant (also known as a chatbot) that fields inquiries and requests from potential tenants for landlords who own and operate multiple units.
Even before the pandemic, startups like these raised impressive sums. Then the coronavirus crisis hit. Social distancing made it even more essential to embrace new, virtual solutions for conducting the day-to-day essential tasks of the real-estate business. As a result, proptech startups - which made pockets of the sector faster, cheaper, and smarter - blossomed further. Beyond HQ raised $1.75 million, for example, while MeetElise pulled off a $6.5 million round in 2020.
To determine which startups are truly gamechangers, Insider reached out to venture capitalists to ask which proptech firms will continue to thrive in a post-pandemic world. We evaluated dozens of nominations for companies that are proving their relevance amid major cultural shifts in where employees live and what offices are even for, as well as increased digital adoption by realtors, landlords, office managers, contractors, and warehouse workers.
Weeks of careful vetting resulted in this list of the 31 hottest proptech startups right now.
Below, find two of the companies that VCs said have bright futures. Please see the full list for all 31 firms.
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