Zach Aarons and Aaron Block of MetaProp
Venture capital firm MetaProp closed a $100 million fund to invest in early-stage proptech companies.
The New York-based firm’s fund, MetaProp Ventures III, is more than twice the size of its second fund, which raised $40 million in 2018.
One of the earlier venture capital firms to focus on proptech, MetaProp was founded in 2015 by Zach Aarons and Aaron Block with $5 million from friends and family.
Investors in the company’s third fund include high-profile real estate players such as PGIM, Mitsui Fudosan, CBRE, Bridge Investment Group, Cushman & Wakefield and JLL Spark. It also secured investment from DAMAC, Development Bank of Japan, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, and Swire Properties.
Co-founder Aarons said the pandemic has accelerated the demand for proptech as companies are coming back to the office.
“Real estate practitioners have changed the way they value technology and innovation,” he added in a statement. “What was previously a ‘nice-to-have’ has turned into a ‘must-have.’”
Initial investments from the third fund include proptech startups Proper.ai, Ergeon, GoFor, Dongnae, HighArc and Milo Credit, MetaProp said.
MetaProp has previously invested in appraisal startup Bowery Valuation and Spruce, a title insurance startup that raised $29 million in May 2020, among several others.
Last summer, the company revealed it was seeking to raise $200 million — its biggest fund yet — to back larger, later-stage proptech startups.
Investment is rushing into proptech, often seeking to modernize tech-resistant aspects of real estate such as construction, title insurance or mortgage closings. A number of these companies are seeking to go public through blank-check companies, or SPACs.
Smart lock maker Latch is the latest to go this route. The company said it raised $453 million in cash from the public offering.
