Overview
From education and health care to finance and anything in between, technology is transforming almost every industry.
PropTech is a term that refers to a combination of real estate and technology. PropTech encompasses an area where technology innovates how property is occupied, managed, and transacted, from leasing and property management to coworking and investing. Reduced paperwork and improved transaction speed, efficiency, and security are a few of the goals of real estate technology.
Real estate is the world’s largest asset class, worth an estimated US$277 trillion. Still, the industry has been rather slow to adopt new technologies. Until now. With the COVID pandemic came digital acceleration and the notion of you no longer need to embrace to thrive, you need to embrace digital to survive.
In 2020 81% of real estate companies were planning to use new digital technology to improve traditional processes, and that tech and software spending is increasing by over 11% per year.
Forbes
The history of PropTech dates back to the dot com boom in the late 1990s, where the focus was on moving listings onto the digital media while at a time when most sales and residential listings were on print media and real estate offices.
Social distancing requirements and regional lockdown followed by the spread of COVID-19 had shaped the current wave of PropTech, driven by a range of new technologies available, such as artificial intelligence and big data. Other examples of PropTech are drones, virtual reality, building information modeling (BIM), data analytics tools, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain, smart contracts, real estate crowdfunding, financial technologies (fintech) related to real estate, smart cities and regions, smart homes, and shared economy. These relatively new innovations have the potential to boost productivity and competitiveness while also improving energy and resource efficiency and effectiveness.
Currently, nearly 50 countries have formed national communities (PropTechRussia, Austrian PropTechInitiative, PropTechBelgium, SwissPropTech, PropTechDach, PropTechSpain, etc.) united into a single network.
Global technology entrepreneurs and investors have already turned their attention to the PropTech sector. According to NAR (National Association of Realtors), the real estate market has reached the highest level in the USA since 2006. Recent Crunchbase data shows that VC-backed real estate startups have raised about $11 billion this year, up 22% from the previous year.
According to the real estate and investment management company, JLL PropTech has attracted over $9.7 billion of funding activity in the first half of 2021, making it the most active first half on record. The US holds first place for PropTech funded startups, with China being the second-largest funding market, followed by India, Singapore, and Australia.
While real estate technology adoption was on the rise before the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become essential for today’s leading real estate players, buildings and spaces” “Technology is at the center of the most important trends shaping business and real estate. That includes hybrid work, health and safety, and sustainability initiatives, all of which are in high demand. That’s why we expect funding within this sector to break records this year.
Ben Breslau, Chief Research Officer at JLL for SBT
Crunchbase states that Property management companies ($2 billion) and construction ($1.9 billion) are the two PropTech areas that have received the most financing this year.
Medium has highlighted the following trends in the PropTech industry: Big Data, Blockchain, Building Information Modelling (BIM), Construction Technology, Drone Technology, Geolocations, Internet of Things (IoT), Sharing Economy, Sustainability and GreenTech and Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).
Namepicks
Place
Place is a tech and business services platform for real estate agents. Тhe company has recently raised a $100 million mega-round. Place operates on a great domain – its exact brand match, Place.com. The majority of globally successful brands secure .com domains exactly matching their brand name, a sure way to instill trust and authority, avoid security risks and make their marketing most effective.
The company spent $3 million to acquire the Place.com domain name, co-founder Ben Kinney shared, describing it as an important step in Place’s ambitions to build a consumer brand in support of the agents that use its technology and services.
Pacaso
Pacaso is a PropTech company that has created a marketplace that eases the buying and selling a second home. Pacaso has raised $1.5 billion in funding over five rounds since its inception. Pacaso was founded in October 2020 by Austin Allison and Spencer Rascoff, two former executives at Zillow with the idea to make second home ownership more achievable for more people.
The startup also operates on an exact brand match domain – Pacaso.com. The competition in real estate has always been fierce and taking it online can only mean more competition with moor tools to use to attract customers and investors. Having a strong brand helps differentiate from the competition as well as create and grow a better relationship with your customers.
ServiceTitan
Founded in 2012, ServiceTitan is a service management software that assists home service organizations in generating more leads and closing more deals. The company has raised a total of $1.1 billion in funding over 8 rounds.
ServiceTitan.com is the domain name this startup has chosen to operate on; it perfectly matches their brand name, and the .com extension is what visitors intuitively lean towards when typing a web address.
Knock
Knock is a PropTech company that provides innovative solutions like our Knock Home Swap™ and Knock GO™. The company operates in over 60 markets.
Knock has invested in the exact brand match domain knock.com – simple, short, and easy to remember, one of a kind name that you won’t need to repeat twice so people remember the brand and where to find it. The business was initially founded as Knockaway and the brand still owns the domain knockaway.com
Compass
Compass is an online platform that allows users to purchase, rent, and trade real estate assets in real-time. The company is valued at over $1 billion and is registered under the ticker NYSE: COMP.
Compass owns compass.com – the natural choice for a brand of that caliber. The name Compass nicely fits with the company tagline – “find your place”. Compass was founded as “Urban Compass” in 2012 and later on upgraded its brand and the matching domain.
Highlights
32 brands have chosen the .COM extension. Using a.com domain name is the most authoritative approach to ensure that your website will be discovered on the internet. 2 PropTech brands secured .CO domains. .Co domain name extension was introduced in 1991 and was initially registered for Columbia. Its been later transformed to cc generic TLD name.
31 companies operate on .com domain names exactly matching their brand (EBM).
Only one of the brands on the list included a dash in their domain name.
While we make every effort to ensure the data on our site is accurate, complete, and up-to-date, we cannot guarantee its reliability. Our data is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, financial, or other advice. We strongly recommend that you independently verify any information before relying on it.
Other resources
- 300+ PropTech and Real Estate Companies and Their Domain Name Choices
- Domain Name Strategies for Business Owners
- Why Investing in Your Branding is the Best Strategy for Your Business
- How to Build Trust for Your Brand and Open New Online Sales Opportunities
How does your brand name match your company vision? What new horizons can a better name open? Get in touch if you feel your brand deserves a better name, we are always happy to help.
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