the past In a decade, a tech sector that impacts everyone’s quality of life — from where we live to what we put in our homes — has come a long way. Proptech has made our lives easier with innovations such as smart homes, AirBnB and the ability to shop and get a mortgage on our phones.
But major gaps and opportunities remain.
The single-family housing market is huge. About $2 trillion worth of homes were sold in 2021, according to CoreLogic. But buying a house is still a terribly difficult process. A team from Keller Williams identified 180 things a sales broker does, and even this list, exhaustive as it is, doesn’t give a complete picture of the many other players in a typical trade.
Buying a house these days is a lot like running the steeplechase: you have to sprint between obstacles and pray that you have the stamina to survive it all. It shouldn’t be that hard. So let’s solve it. This is a call to current and aspiring proptech entrepreneurs to solve the problems close to home.
There has probably never been a better time to start. Capital is looking for good ideas and quality execution. In 2021, venture capital poured a record $11.7 billion into proptech. Although the market has started to slow this year, driven in part by factors such as public market performance, inflation and higher interest rates, there is still strong investor demand for great and new ideas with excellent execution.
If no one can find your house online, is it really for sale?
Starting a business is difficult, but we now have a proptech path, full of financiers and advisors, who can help entrepreneurs overcome early hurdles to maturity and deep market penetration.
Proptech can solve many fundamental home buying problems
Proptech still has fundamental issues to address, including one of the most common: buying a home.
Below are eight high leverage pain points that haven’t been adequately addressed. Due to the sheer volume of housing construction, even marginal improvements in some of these areas will be greeted enthusiastically and great leaps forward will be richly rewarded.
Affordability of housing
The challenge: Many Americans cannot own a single-family home, no matter how long and how wisely they save. High construction costs, strong demand driving up prices from relatively low supply, and low incomes can make owning a home difficult or impossible.
This is not just a problem for low-income households. The National Association of Realtors’ Housing Affordability Index, which measures the ability of a median-income family to pay monthly mortgage payments on a median-priced home, fell 30% between April 2021 and April 2022. percentage of American income.