Welcome back to the PropTech Retrospect, where I cover the most exciting deals, technologies and startups making waves each month in the way real estate and property is handled.
This March, we saw another handful of notable venture capital firms raising funds with intent to invest in the sector and a long list of proptech startups that announced fundraises to accelerate their growth.
Two industry segments of note in the past 30 days include construction and property management.
Two construction companies announced funding rounds over $100 million in early March, including Veev and OpenSea, and a number of others also brought in investor cash to help solve the long timetables, outdated payment procedures and supply issues associated with homebuilding.
Property management technology has also seen a number of impressive deals, but I believe the increasing amount of M&A activity is what really stands out. One example is Poplar Homes, which has already made nine purchases.
The news doesn’t stop there. Below I’ve listed the biggest stories, news and activity around proptech industry for March.
Enjoy this month’s PropTech Retrospect.
Property Management
- Alfred raises $125M round, completes first property management acquisition: “The company partners with residential buildings to provide access to an Alfred – a person who essentially becomes an extension of residents taking care of a multitude of services and chores on their behalf – whether it be grocery shopping, picking up or dropping off dry cleaning, going to a specialist shop, mounting a TV and so on.” (Mar. 8)
- Poplar Homes announces $53M Series B, strategic hires to grow its property management platform: “Poplar says that it has also made nine acquisitions of property management companies in high-growth markets, and plans to leverage these hires and acquisitions to drive its growth strategy.” (Mar. 29)
- Newmark launches flexible office space platform Optality (Mar. 4)
- Home365 raises $26M Series B for property investment and management platform: “It also stated that its novel model guarantees net operating income and secures the performance of investor assets, while lowering stress and variance of portfolio performance.” (Mar. 29)
- Intuitive MB launches “Smart Hospital” IoT platform in US (Mar. 7)
- ThreeFold to launch first Neighborhood Cloud in Dubai (Mar. 7)
Real Estate/Property Investment
- Keyway raises $70M for sale-leaseback solution targeting SMBs: “The solution uses machine learning to source and underwrite real estate and aims for a closing in just four weeks. The proptech then leases it back to the SMBs allowing them to access capital quicker and with fewer restrictions.” (Mar. 4)
- Figure and Apollo complete ownership transfer via blockchain: “The companies say the secure process was a “first of its kind” in the mortgage industry and has the potential to revolutionize the $3 trillion mortgage ecosystem. … The release says that when coupled with a connected digital currency account, this technology enables real-time, multi-party settlement that incurs less risk than traditional methods.”(Mar. 17)
- Key raises $11M seed round for co-ownership platform in North America (Mar. 8)
- Jia Finance raises $5M seed round to provide U.S. homes, funding to foreign investors: “..it provides foreign investors access to U.S. real estate by addressing notable hurdles, including the lack of a U.S. credit score and a large amount of paperwork requested by major banks in the country.” (Mar. 31)
- Kukun launches home renovation budgeting product (Mar. 9)
- Flock Homes closes on $26M for landlords to exchange rentals for shares in a portfolio of homes (TechCrunch, Mar. 24)
- JLL launches proptech valuation product (Mar. 16)
- HonestDoor raises $2.2M seed round for real estate valuation platform (Mar. 18)
Rentals/Letting
- Roofstock snaps up $240M for accessible single-family rental investing: “The company offers an online marketplace where users can both buy and sell rental homes in more than 70 U.S. markets. Some of these properties have tenants already residing in them, giving investors the opportunity to buy and sell the home without the renters being forced to vacate.” (Mar. 10)
- Baselane launches landlord banking platform to simplify rental property finances: “The platform operates alongside partner Blue Ridge Bank N.A., and will allow landlords to open and manage banking accounts tailored to specific needs of their investment properties.” (Mar. 15)
- PropTech Startup Goodlord Raises £27M to Boost UK Renting Experience (PYMNTS, Mar. 30)
- MyPlace rounds up $5.8M for private home social network (Mar. 3)
- Placemakr Raises $90 Million for Next-Gen Lodging Including Hotel Pop-Ups (Skift, Mar. 15)
- Emerald Stay surpasses crowdfund goal with weeks left in campaign (Mar. 14)
- Nova Credit and SafeRent partner to offer credit checks for migrant housing applicants (Mar. 22)
Construction
- Veev raises $400M to scale tech-enabled homebuilding: “As traditional homebuilding methods struggle to solve America’s housing inventory crisis, Veev is using a new turnkey, panelized approach to expedite production, improve sustainability and reduce the cost of building a home.” (Mar. 1)
- Construction proptech OpenSpace reaches valuation of $902M: “OpenSpace’s tech stacks enables builders to easily capture a visual record of a job site, simplifying an ordinarily painstaking process with 360 degree construction photos.” (Mar. 2)
- Handle.com raises $10M Series A for construction payment compliance (Mar. 23)
- CoFi lands $7M seed for construction finance platform (Mar. 9)
- Diamond Age bets on robotics in construction with $50M Series A round: “Diamond Age uses a combination of this 3D printing technique with its robotics technology to enable a 2,000 square foot single-story home to be printed and finished with its robotic tool set.” (Mar. 10)
- BKwai snags $2.9M seed round to put construction data in engineers’ hands (Mar. 2)
Lending
- Tomo raises $40M Series A, hits $640M valuation: “The company has expanded to seven states since it was founded in October 2020 by former Zillow executives Greg Schwartz and Carey Armstrong, and plans to be in half of all U.S. states by the end of the year.” (Mar. 21)
- Proptech bettor First American looks toward mortgage tech and CRE: “As of Sept. 30, First American had deployed $292 million into 16 different venture-backed proptech companies. … By the end of 2021, the firm said it had invested in 20 proptech companies and its venture investments had produced $355 million in gains.” (Mar. 31)
- Kiavi expands bridge and rental loan product in Midwest (Mar. 21)
- Reigo secures $13M Series A, closes $100M securitization for bridge loans: “The company also noted this is the first ever securitization in the short-term real estate debt market to be included as part of its investment policy for its machine-learning-based mechanism.” (Mar. 22)
- LoanDepot restructuring creates new digital products/services unit (Mar. 10)
VC Funds News
- Tishman Speyer locks in $100M for debut proptech fund: “The firm also noted that, in addition to capital gains on its investments, it plans to continue targeting technology companies that can add value to its existing real estate portfolio and management stack.” (Mar. 24)
- Comunidad Partners completes $300M social impact, affordable housing fund (Mar. 23)
- Proptech VC Fifth Wall halts latest SPAC: “Shares of half of the companies that finished SPAC deals in the last two years are down 40% or more from the $10 price where SPACs typically begin trading, erasing tens of billions of dollars in startup market value.” (Mar. 1)
- Pi Labs completes $90M proptech fund (Mar. 8)
- Magnolia Capital and Principal Real Estate Investors announce single-family rental joint venture (Mar. 17)
M&A News
- SmartRent acquires maintenance service platform SightPlan for $135M: “The acquisition follows SmartRent’s recent acquisition of alternative smart-home firm iQuue for an undisclosed sum in January, and is part of an ongoing trend of proptech consolidation that is expected to continue throughout the year.” (Mar. 24)
- Porch plans to buy stake in RWS for $33M (Mar. 18)
Partnerships
- Roostify and ICE Mortgage Technologies partnership expected to boost e-closings: “When the closing package is created in the Encompass loan origination system during the closing process, Roostify’s system will be notified, authenticate the task, and send the requirements to the borrower.” (Mar. 11)
- SIOR promotes proptech scaling with REACH partnership (Mar. 1)
- Acorn Finance and Joist partner to embed finance offers into mobile platform (Mar. 1)
- MIT and La Haus announce joint research agreement for LatAm housing gap: “This provides MIT with a large, previously unavailable data source to analyze, with hopes that it will illuminate housing quality issues in LatAm’s massive urban environments.” (Mar. 2)
- Zego and 365 Connect announce partnership (Mar. 7)
- Ocrolus announces ICE Encompass integration (Mar. 14)
- FoxyAI announces partnership with on-demand imaging network ProxyPics (Mar. 16)
Housing Market
- Amid heavy financial losses, iBuyers bought 70,000 homes in 2021 (Mar. 2)
- Opinion: Can tech and iBuyers fix the real estate market? (Mar. 29)
- For $1K Pacaso’s latest product gives users early access to new listings (Mar. 9)
- Keller Williams continues global growth, expands to Guyana (Mar. 11)
FinLedger Q&As
- Tomo CEO Greg Schwartz talks agents, expansion plans and big goals for the digital mortgage company (Mar. 10)
- Morty CEO Nora Apsel discusses the online mortgage marketplace and its journey to open access to all (Mar. 3)
- Audience Town CEO Ed Carey discusses advertising along the home buying journey (Mar. 29)
- Transactly CEO Bryan Bowles discusses how technology can help, not replace, agents (Mar. 25)
Tech Nest: The PropTech Podcast with Nate Smoyer
- Opendoor is more than an iBuyer—Interview with Co-founder Ian Wong (Mar. 15)
- CRE Inefficiencies Create a Booming Data Business, with Enertiv CEO Connell McGill (Mar. 22)
- Creating Faster, Better Appraisal Management Systems, Interview with Reggora CEO and Co-founder Brian Zitin (Mar. 8)
- Financing $1.5B as Unsecured Loans Through Service Contractors in 2 Years with David Haas, Co-founder and COO of PowerPay (Mar. 1)
Partner content
- Common digital user experience mistakes and how to avoid them (Mar. 3)
- How community banks can grow with confidence during challenging times (Mar. 15)
- What factors impact why consumers choose to work with a lender again? (Mar. 21)
- How will rising interest rates affect your financial institution? (Mar. 25)
Other notable proptech news
- Digital real estate investment platforms launch trade association, aim to establish market standards: “The Association of Real Estate Investment Platforms (AREIP) was launched … with the goal of establishing common market standards in a digital real estate market that is accelerating at breakneck speed.” (Mar. 28)
- Clear Capital launches two Desktop Appraisal solutions to meet new GSE standards (Mar. 30)
- Nada announes new Dallas HQ (Mar. 3)
- Goldman Sachs leads GridPoint $75M raise for commercial building decarbonization (Mar. 4)
- VTS announces new Chicago office following earnings release (Mar. 4)
- Snappt raises $100M to combat fraud in rental docs (Mar. 15)
- Zavvie announced former Amazon AI lead engineer as new CTO (Mar. 3)
- CentralSquare launches Property Tax product in US (Mar. 30)
- 2022 HousingWire TECH100 Mortgage Honorees (Mar. 7)
- 2022 HousingWire TECH100 Real Estate Honorees (Mar. 10)