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The proptech sector has undergone a dramatic shift in recent years. From the boom of new AR and VR technologies to sudden pivots in demands for office space, a confluence of variables—both welcomed and unexpected—have brought proptech to where it is today.

Vik Venkatraman, General Manager for Blueprint, a real estate industry tech event taking place September 12 – 14 in Las Vegas, outlines the past, present, and future of proptech, suggesting the space impacts all of us.

The Financial Revolutionist: What factors have driven the proptech landscape to where it is today?

Vik Venkatraman: The technology ecosystem around the built environment has been propelled by three primary factors, each of which showed us the need for an event like Blueprint to bring together the ecosystem around the built environment:

1. The increasing sophistication and comfort generally in streamlining and digitizing payments generally, largely driven by the advancements in fintech over the past decade.

2. The early success of technology products aimed at the enterprises within the built environment—broker enablement, resources for multifamily, data products for sourcing and underwriting—allowed venture capital firms to have successful funds, and raise larger follow-on funds. Over $20B of venture capital was invested in the sector in 2021, and we expect to only see that grow this year and going forward.

3. The pressures and opportunities placed on the various asset classes as a result of Covid-19. While the industry was slowly evaluating what to adopt, and we had gotten comfortable with the first waves of innovation in the space, we all got hit with a new external factor that pulled people out of offices, had them spending more time in multifamily settings, and rapidly shifted the demands on warehouses. Technologies that promised better agility, flexibility, monitoring, and speed were on hand and ready for adoption, and we progressed over a couple of years what might have taken a decade to happen on its own.

Where do you think the sector is headed in the coming years?

Owners and operators of real estate have seen the impact of shrewd applications of software, and as a result, we expect key trends to get bigger:

1. Single-family homes can be closed completely digitally—and, in some cases, algorithmically—for owners anywhere in the country or the world. A big step here can be seen with Notarize, which has digitized the notary process. 

2. Thanks to HoneyBricks, Arrived Homes, LEX Markets, and GroundFloor, fractional ownership for multifamily, warehouse, and single-family homes has blown open access to the asset classes for many who might not have qualified or even known about the opportunities available.

3. The availability and applications of data are transforming the way operators can make decisions. Companies like Cherre, Placer, and CREXi are each transforming different kinds of decisions. 

If we roll the clock forward on these trends and others, we might expect to see an environment where any and all assets could be bought and sold fractionally or digitally, and by nearly anyone. The growth of firms like Roofstock, Pacaso, and Esusu, all of whom you can hear from at Blueprint 2022, is just the tip of the iceberg in the ways that access to real estate is changing with technology. We might expect the reliability of the service ecosystem around these to really bloom, resulting in more reliable jobs for the people who do them, and better quality of life/use for the resident or occupier. We also might see ease and enhancements come to the variety of people and services that touch the built environment, as it becomes feasible to create and sustain increasingly specialized and niche companies.

Why should people outside the proptech space care about the industry?

In our society, basically everything we do happens in the built environment. We live in built homes, we work in built offices (or built coffee shops). We play in built gyms, hotels, and retail stores. The goods we buy come through built warehouses.

Technology that makes these assets easier to operate, or cheaper to run, or more visible for issues deeply impacts everything we do in society. Whether we like it or not, we’re all participants in real estate and real estate tech.

What drove you to put Blueprint together, and what can we learn from it?

We at Blueprint believe that the real estate tech ecosystem is at an inflection point where we’ve gotten largely comfortable with the applications of technology, the shape of good venture investments, and the necessary talent with the insight and perspective to build the right things. Progress from this point forward comes from helping the right people find one another at the right time - when a great company is raising a round of financing, when an insightful investor is filling out a syndicate, when a forward leaning operator is going to stick out their neck for a proof-of-concept on a thousand doors. By creating a forum both literally at our conferences, like the upcoming Blueprint Vegas 2022, as well as in spirit through the work we do every day, we believe that we can help generate value for each of our constituents.