In 2017, venture investors deployed over $5 billion in real estate technology, more than 150 times the $33 million invested in 2010. Once a sector seemingly ignored by the venture industry, real estate tech has come front and center, notably producing two of the three most valuable startups in the United States, WeWork and Airbnb.
Driving this investment explosion is the evolution of real estate tech from its initial phase of software and marketplaces complementing the incumbents to a
Given that U.S. real estate is a $35 trillion asset class, and represents a multi-faceted market generating over $1 trillion in revenue annually, according to IBISWorld Industry Reports, the strong interest in companies built to serve, arbitrage or compete with the incumbents is not surprising. Nevertheless, up until a few years ago there were only a handful of significant U.S. real estate tech success stories.