Press Release

Law firm Shoosmiths has supported research into the property technology (proptech) sector in partnership with Financial Times backed media platform Sifted Intelligence and proptech VC Pi Labs.

The report, Proptech: How the world’s biggest asset class faces digital disruption, is jointly sponsored by Shoosmiths Pi Labs, investigating how technology is reshaping real estate.

The report found that while the wider real estate sector faced unprecedented challenges throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, proptech continued to grow and is set to go from strength to strength in the coming years.

Key findings of the report

• The pandemic awoken the real estate world from its tech-adverse slumber, accelerating social, cultural and behavioural shifts such as the normalisation of remote and distributed work
• European proptechs are mostly focusing on the B2B sector, but the B2C scene is set to increase with growing trends of start-ups focusing on the mortgage and rental processes or helping retail investors participate in real estate investments through crowdfunding and other digital investment processes
• As the proptech sector develops, it is expected to lead to consolidation within the market. Experts predict that the most successful companies will then partner with bigger brands (including traditional real estate players) to expand globally
• Macroeconomic trends could also help proptech’s continued success. Rising interest rates are good news for property investment-focused startups, as capital flees volatile equities into a safer asset class. This is set to increase demand for advanced data and analytics for deal-making, valuations and portfolio tracking

As legal experts embedded within the technology sector and with a long history in real estate, Shoosmiths has been at the forefront of advising companies and investors — including Pi Labs, Casafari, Movewise and one of the early backers of Zoopla — in the sector’s shift towards digitisation.

Steve Barnett, partner in the corporate team at Shoosmiths specialising in advising companies and investors on venture and growth capital investments, said: “There is no doubt that the pandemic has encouraged unprecedented growth for the proptech sector, and we’re seeing that reflected in the volume of investments that we are advising on at Shoosmiths. We are very pleased to partner with Pi Labs and Sifted on this research, and look forward to seeing proptech’s ongoing expansion as the real estate industry continues to evolve and respond to ever-changing market conditions and digital disruption.”

Download the full report here - Proptech: How the world’s biggest asset class faces digital disruption