Some of these tech start-ups are already major players in the real estate market, but their role in the sector is set to grow in the coming years
If in the finance sector we talk about fintechs, an equivalent concept has also emerged in the real estate market: PropTech. Specifically, this term refers to companies whose main activity is the application of various technological developments to the activities linked to this sector.
Although it may seem a very new term, it is an area that dates back a few years. Furthermore, its representatives also include some well-known names for the general public, such as idealista.com and Airbnb.
As companies that focus on cutting-edge technologies and young projects, many of them fit perfectly into the profile of start-ups, these proptech companies base their activities on technologies and applications such as Big Data (which is useful for actions such as property valuations, etc), real estate crowdfounding (investments in properties), crowdlending (for loans), virtual reality (visiting a property remotely), or marketplaces (websites for buying and selling and/or renting). The degree of progress of each of these is different, but their capacity to change the real estate sector will increase in the coming years.
The most numerous propTech companies in Spain today are those based on marketplaces platforms. These are portals to search for properties to buy or rent. In addition to the aforementioned example of idealista.com, there are other brands with this profile that are familiar to the general public, such as Fotocasa or Habitaclia.
The next most common types of these companies in Spain are management platforms and Peer to Peer (P2P) platforms for rental and sale/purchase transactions, mainly for residential properties. While the field of offices and premises has yet to be explored by propTech companies.
One of the fields where propTech is making the most headlines is in its application in mortgages. Some banks already allow the process of taking out a mortgage through digital channels.
The current propTech situation should be seen as a very interesting springboard to see how these players will change the real estate sector in the coming years.
