PropTech is short for property technology. This term describes those startups offering technologically innovative products or new business models for the real estate industry.
PropTech in turn is divided into two:
1. Residential property tech
In this flavour of proptech, innovation is focused on delivering efficiency to homes and/or apartments that people own or rent. In most instances the solutions are business-to-consumer (B2C).
Zillow, founded in 2006, is an example of a mature residential property technology business.
2. CRETech
This stands for commercial property tech / commercial real estate (CRE) tech.
CRETech represents solutions to drive efficiencies in industrial, office and retail property process flows and data management. Generally, solutions fall into the B2B (business-to-business) category of technology.
Commercial property is significantly more complicated than residential property. Successfully meeting customer needs for CRE is reliant on deep domain knowledge and strong data competencies.
