Welcome to another exciting week in PropTech where we provide a weekly roundup of the latest in PropTech startups, news, highlights, and more!

🌟Who is our PropTech Star of the week? Let’s find out! 👀

📰 TLDR

• 🆓Earn a FREE ticket to digitalBAU - just refer 5 friends!

• Optimiz Construction raises €1.5M in Seed

• HELIXintel raises undisclosed amount in Series A

• LaHaus raises $62M Series C

• NewHomesMate raises $5.5M in Seed

• Enersee raises €1.2M in Seed

• Collov raises $10M Series A

• HomeLane raises $9.1M from existing investors in convertible notes

• BasicHomeLoan raises $4.7M in pre-Series B

• Purlin raises undisclosed amount

• ApartX rasies $250,000 Seed

• 🌟PropTech Star of the week: Qualia is a US cloud-based startup offering title, escrow, and eClosing products to bring simplicity, consistency, and transparency to the complex Real Estate closing process

• ➕ Bonus Insights: What we learned at last week’s PropTech Vienna conference

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❗Highlights in PropTech

Optimiz Construction

• Optimiz Construction raises €1.5M in Seed

• Optimiz Construction is a welded mesh optimization solution that reduces the quantities of steel consumed by 15%.

• The platform, which also improves efficiency on the construction site, translates into significant savings in time, money and above all CO2 emissions for construction companies.

HELIXintel

• HELIXintel raises undisclosed amount in Series A

• HELIXintel provides tools for insurers to manage risk, property managers to manage their portfolio, energy companies to deliver incentives that improve energy and resource efficiency, and vendors to deliver quality.

• The platform sources and organizes property and asset data on a significant scale to enable businesses to empower themselves by making strategic and informed decisions, unlocking hidden value within their properties and assets.

LaHaus

• LaHaus raises $62M Series C

• LaHaus offers an end-to-end real estate marketplace that streamlines buying and selling properties in Latin America

• La Haus is one of the leading proptechs in Colombia ($135M raised so far) and oerates in Bogotá, Medellín, and Mexico City.

NewHomesMate

• NewHomesMate raises $5.5M in Seed

• NewHomesMate helps homebuyers search, compare, and buy new construction homes. The platform aims to digitize and simplify the new construction home-buying process by matching buyers with home builders.

Enersee

• Enersee raises €1.2M in Seed

• Enersee is targeting large real estate portfolios, offices, hospitals and industrial buildings - using advanced AI to give energy managers the tools to monitor energy performance and consumption more effectively – reducing waste, costs, and carbon footprints

Collov

• Collov raises $10M Series A

• Collov is a design automation Cloud Computing Platform, making design automation an industrial-grade solution driven by large models and generative AI.

• Collov has completed nearly 100,000 design solutions, with more than 1,000 interior designers and 300 companies on the application list.

• Collov is also collaborating with university labs such as Stanford, Yale, and Peking University to develop controllable large models of MultiModal Machine Learning.

HomeLane

• HomeLane raises $9.1M from existing investors in convertible notes

• HomeLane offers personalised tech-enabled end-to-end interior servicwith over 30,000 customers across 22 cities in India

BasicHomeLoan

• BasicHomeLoan raises $4.7M in pre-Series B

• BasicHomeLoan is a fintech company, developing an automated platform for home lending in India.

Purlin

• Purlin raises a undisclosed amount

• Purlin is a technology company that designs, creates, and delivers advanced AI solutions for the real estate market.

• Purlin provides enterprise-level software tools to real estate brokerages, real estate teams, and agents to help them effectively generate more leads, promote properties, target potential buyers, and manage the buying and closing process.

ApartX

• ApartX rasies $250,000 Seed

• ApartX is a B2B SaaS platform that automates up to 90 per cent of operational processes for landlords in the short-term rental market. By leveraging biometrics, smart locks, and digital sign technologies, the platform streamlines operations for approximately 1,700 properties.

🌟PropTech Star of the week: Qualia

Qualia, the San Francisco-based tech company, is radically changing the landscape of real estate transactions. Their mission is to create a unified, cloud-based, all-in-one platform that seamlessly navigates real estate transactions from initial intent to final title exchange. Qualia's cloud-based settlement platform most recently secured $65M in Series D funding, demonstrating substantial industry confidence in their model and bringing their total funding to over $160M.

Qualia's provides a great solution to an industry often plagued by time-consuming and complex processes. Their platform is not just a digital tool, but an environment for collaboration, transparency, and efficiency that connects all parties involved in real estate transactions - buyers, sellers, real estate agents, lenders, and title agents - to close the deal smoothly and efficiently.

Why We Like Qualia?

• Collaborative workflow - Qualia’s centralized platform serves as a shared hub for communication and collaboration between all parties (including a built-in video chat feature)

• Robust integration - The platform interfaces smoothly with over 150+ other applications and services frequently utilized in the real estate industry, like underwriters, banks, and couriers

• Heightened security - Qualia is built on a secure, encrypted infrastructure to maintain the utmost standards in secure document storage and transfer.

• Transparent operations - All parties gain real-time visibility into the closing process, minimizing confusion

• Automation - Qualia automates many processes that would traditionally be manual

• Built-in audit assistance - Qualia emphasizes “audit ready” with dedicated Reconciliation Specialists and full operational accounting, reconciliations, fraud protection, and smart balancing

It wouldn’t be surprising if Qualia integrates AI to provide further value, as user’s already report a 75% reduction in workload in it’s current state.

What Are the Risks? 

Qualia is pretty well fortified in the Title & Escrow Tech sector. There are few risks from our perspective. Qualia is well funded, has lots of satisfied users, and heavy automation/integration. Therefore, there’s low probability that Qualia will get dethroned by a competitor.

The only potential risks would be due to mismanagement, customer neglect, or heavy regulation, but all 3 are highly unlikely.

Overall

Objectively, we at PropTech Stars are optimistic about Qualia's future. The Title & Escrow aspect of real estate transactions are complicated and Qualia provides lots of value. As we watch the future of PropTech unfold, Qualia continues to stand out as an innovative business.

➕Bonus Insights

What we learned at last week’s PropTech Vienna conference

We attended PropTech Vienna last week and met with many investors, startups, and experts in the Real Estate and Technology industry. /

The main theme of Real Estate + Tech was unsurprisingly sustainability and energy efficiency.

A large number of startups had a sustainability scope and almost all investors, including those from Fifth Wall, emphasized the preference to invest in startups with some kind of green/sustainability angle.

Why? SFDR.

The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) requires asset managers to classify their funds as either an article 6, 8 or 9 fund depending on their level of sustainability.

The SFDR sets out mandatory ESG disclosures requirements for EUROPEAN asset managers to comply with. The aim is to create more transparency into their investment strategies, prevent greenwashing, and prevent claims that products are sustainable when they are in reality not.

According to the SFDR’s classification system, a fund will either be classified as an article 6,8 or 9 fund – depending on their characteristics and level of sustainability:

• Article 6: Funds without a sustainability scope

• Article 8: Funds that promote environmental or social characteristics (light green)

• Article 9: Funds that have sustainable investment as their objective (dark green)

What does this mean for Europe? 

EU Real Estate asset owners, developers, and managers will need to comply with sustainability regulations or be “taxed to death” (words from a presentation by Dirk Paelinck - CEO Interoffices/Workero, Chairman European PropTech Association - PropTech House)

To make matters more interesting, EU companies will have to file 2 annual reports starting in 2024 - Financial and Sustainability.

Fines? YES!

Essentially, as a result of the Paris Agreement and EU Green Deal, time has caught up with Real Estate developers, construction companies, and large international Real Estate asset owners. No longer do they have a choice or option of green washing. If they do NOT adopt sustainability practices, their assets will be obsolete, unbankable (no loans), and incur high taxes.

In terms of construction, interestingly, a few large developers are switching to timber construction. This is the norm/standard in North America and the EU is now realizing the need to switch to timber in order to reduce carbon footprints, decrease costs of production, and decrease time to completion.

Speaking from personal experience, no wonder it takes longer to complete a construction project in Europe than the United States.

The benefits of timber construction, as highlighted by Martina Maly-Gaertner - COO, Member of the Board UBM Development AG:

• Faster time to construction due to offsite assembly and less inner-city traffic

• Less static load = reduction in material costs

• Better for the environment = reduction in carbon footprint

And from the investor perspective, highlighted by Miguel Nigorra Esteban - Partner at Fifth Wall, we understood the following:

• Real Estate is moving from opex to capex

• PropTech still has opportunities

• ClimateTech is a HUGE opportunity

• The driver in Europe is the ESG regulatory environment

• There is opportunity in end of life (demolition, etc.)

What does it mean for the United States?

Any US company with assets in Europe will need to abide by the same regulations listed above.

Furthermore, the US is bound to enact similar regulations or standards at some point in the future, and the same opportunities exist.

Brace yourselves, a regulatory wave is coming. And with that, comes more opportunity!

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