The exponential rise of the Spanish PropTech market has provoked structural changes in the property industry and profession due to the technological revolution, hand in hand with the macroeconomic and property scenario that Spain is currently experiencing. This segment has grown significantly in recent years. PropTech (acronym from ‘property technology’) refers to any company that uses technology to improve or reinvent any service within the housing sector. Among others, improved services and activities are: purchases, sales, and rentals, construction processes, financing, design, maintenance, or management of commercial and residential assets.
In this context, Spain is the second country that attracts the most investment in PropTech in the world, with €824 million during 2020-21. The Spanish industry attracted the second largest amount of investment, ahead of the UK (€769 million), India (€742 million) and Brazil (€444 million), and only behind the US, which leads the ranking with an investment volume far above the rest at €5,889 million.
This is according to a study in Spain and Europe carried out by the international consultancy firm Deloitte, as well as the latest edition of the PropTech Map, produced by the Spanish College of Property Agents (Agentes de la Propiedad Inmobiliaria, API). Vicenç Hernández Reche, CEO for Tecnotramit and chairman for the National Association of Property Agents (Asociación Nacional de Agentes Inmobiliarios, ANAI), opened the report’s presentation event in Barcelona.
More than 4,100 PropTech businesses exist in Europe. The European country with the highest concentration of companies is the UK, with 709 registered companies, followed by Germany (609), and Spain (536). Other countries such as France (387), Bulgaria (200), Finland (191), Sweden (189), Belgium (160), or Italy (152) also have booming PropTech industries. More startups are focused on the office sector (65% of the total), specifically in architecture and project management services in Central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, the focus in Southern Europe is on the residential sector and the technologies that can be applied to it: big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, or virtual and augmented realities.