My most recent post about Opendoor, the so-called iBuying company, is about how it wants to become the “transaction layer for homes.” What that means is they would like to start facilitating third-party transactions between buyers and sellers, and move away (either partially or completely)… Read More
All posts tagged “proptech”
Opendoor wants to be a transaction layer for homes
We have spoken a lot over the years about Opendoor. And for a period of time, iBuying seemed like a very good idea. Zillow go into it. Redfin got into it. Everybody was iBuying. But then this year everybody started losing money, mostly due to… Read More
DDG Partners + GS Invest = Azur
Last week I wrote about a project in New York by DDG Partners called 100 Franklin. If you missed it, go here. I didn’t, however, say much about the developer. Though at the time I was wondering why their website was no longer up. DDG… Read More
“As-is” residential real estate marketplace raises $80 million
Sundae, which is a residential real estate marketplace that connects distressed sellers and/or dated properties with potential investors, has just raised $80 million in Series C funding. Since its founding in 2018, the company has raised a total of $135 million. The marketplace is largely… Read More
Using Clubhouse to talk about real estate and proptech
Okay, Clubhouse is pretty awesome. I participated in my first discussion room — thanks to my friend Evgeny, who has been a vocal supporter of the platform — and I have now seen the light. The topic was real estate and PropTech. And we hope… Read More
The 25 top-funded proptech startups in Canada
Proptech Collective has just published their inaugural 2021 Proptech in Canada report. Here are a couple of screen grabs that you all might find interesting: What these images should tell you is that the Canadian proptech landscape is fairly Toronto-centric, but that it’s also very… Read More
Systemizing Airbnb
Wired recently published a long read called, “I stumbled across a huge Airbnb scam that’s taking over London.” Apparently the people who do these sorts of things on the platform (things that are both illegal and questionable) call it “systemizing.” This is the process of… Read More
Patch Homes announces $5mm Series A round to grow fractional home equity platform
There are a number of home equity startups in the marketplace today. A few years ago I wrote about an alternative product to HELOCs or home equity loans, called Point. And earlier this year, I wrote about a startup, called Landed, that is helping “essential… Read More
The scale and scope of urban tech
“Cities have become the basic platforms for global innovation and economic growth, supplanting the corporation as the fundamental organizing unit of the contemporary economy.” -Richard Florida Richard Florida and Patrick Adler of the Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto have been doing some research on… Read More
Some tweets about construction costs
Today was the 2019 Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I was on a panel in the morning about Proptech. I then sat in on a discussion about construction costs. But after that I had to get back to the office to prepare for… Read More