At a time when little feels unanimous, the housing shortage has become a rare point of agreement.
Politicians across parties acknowledge it. Money has been committed. There’s even a whole new federal agency created to speed up construction and reduce housing costs.
What is harder is turning that intent and money into buildings.
Homes still move through financing, design, approvals, bidding, construction, and long-term operation. Each step adds time, cost, and risk. How that process works often matters more than how much funding is announced.
That reality drew a full room of founders, investors, and operators to the release of the latest Proptech in Canada report yesterday.
Real estate and construction account for about 20.5% of Canada’s GDP, according to Statistics Canada. When systems at that scale struggle to adapt, the effects extend beyond housing, shaping productivity, costs, and economic resilience.
Stephanie Wood, vice president at Alate Partners and lead author of the report, told Digital Journal the research looks at how technology is being used inside the built world.
In a conversation following the presentation, she described an industry facing clearer expectations and less patience for tools that do not fit into day-to-day work.
“Back in 2021, a lot of companies would come in with no product. They might have a basic idea, and the unit economics didn’t make sense for the first five years, but if it was an amazing team, that was okay,” Wood says. “Now there’s a lot more scrutiny around what the path to profitability looks like and where the business is actually going.”
A sector under pressure to perform
Proptech is a broad label, but in practice it refers to the software, data tools, and platforms used to finance, build, operate, and manage real estate and infrastructure. In housing and construction, much of that technology operates behind the scenes, shaping timelines, costs, and risk long before a building is finished.
The Proptech in Canada report shows Canadian proptech companies raised about $450 million in 2025. That figure is well below the previous peak. In 2021 and 2022, annual disclosed funding exceeded $1 billion, with more than 50 rounds each year. In 2025, the number of rounds was closer to 30.
At the same time, the number of active companies continues to rise. The report tracks more than 590 proptech companies operating across Canada, many of which were formed or matured during this period of lower funding activity. Most are based in six cities: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Edmonton.
As funding has slowed and the number of companies has grown, attention has increasingly turned to how technology is being used in practice. Examples in the report show tools becoming part of everyday workflows rather than standalone add-ons.
REALTOR.ca has integrated mortgage qualification directly into property listings through its partnership with Pinch Financial. Fitzrovia is working with Chexy to link rent payments to loyalty rewards. In construction, Pomerleau is using AI, data, and robotics across more than 200 active projects to support bidding, planning, and execution.
In each case, the technology is embedded into existing systems rather than layered on top.
These examples build on conversations that surfaced during Toronto Tech Week last year, where adoption and day-to-day fit were already emerging as key themes. The latest findings show how those ideas are now being applied, particularly through the use of AI.
AI as a response to a labour gap
A shift is underway in how AI is being used inside real estate and construction organizations.
“Our biggest takeaway is around AI,” Wood says. “It’s being built into everyday products, and people are starting to use it as a teammate to amplify what they’re already doing.”
The timing of that shift is significant, as construction firms prepare for a wave of retirements across the workforce.
According to BuildForce Canada’s projections, about 20% of Canada’s construction workers are expected to retire by 2032. Those departures reduce headcount, but they also take experience with them.
When a site superintendent with decades on the job retires, their value is not limited to what is written down. It often lives in judgment calls, pattern recognition, and a sense of risk built over years of experience. When they leave, that experience is rarely transferred in full.
In that context, proptech is as much about preserving what the industry knows as it is about speed.
According to a Business Council of Alberta report, these shortages are already resulting in “stretched” timelines.
At companies such as Pomerleau, AI is being used during the paper-heavy phases of construction that often cause the most expensive delays. Bid estimation, document review, scheduling, and risk analysis draw on historical data to flag issues earlier and reduce reliance on individual memory.
The payoff shows up in fewer bid errors, faster approvals, and less rework. It also creates continuity, allowing teams to carry forward experience even as people cycle out of the workforce.
Wood notes that familiarity has helped adoption.
As more people use AI tools in daily life, expectations inside organizations rise. Buyers are more selective, and tools that do not connect cleanly to existing systems face closer scrutiny.
When government moves into delivery
Public policy is adding another layer of pressure.
The federal government’s $13 billion Build Canada Homes initiative reflects concern about housing delivery risk, a concern also raised by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The initiative aims to speed up construction and reduce costs by supporting modular building, factory-built housing, and other modern methods of construction.
That approach is beginning to show up in procurement.
Earlier this year, Build Canada Homes issued a request for qualifications for the Arbo Downsview project in Toronto, specifically seeking teams with experience in factory-built housing and modern construction methods.
For proptech companies, this signals that expectations are beginning to surface inside project requirements, not just policy statements.
For developers, competing for large public projects increasingly depends on showing real productivity gains, not just meeting baseline compliance.
Technology becomes part of the delivery requirement.
Why this matters beyond proptech
Taken together, these trends show a sector under growing pressure to deliver results while integrating technology into everyday operations.
“There is so much more data available now,” Wood says. “People can make smarter, more informed decisions, and they can make them faster because of AI.”
Companies are operating with less margin for error and clearer expectations from customers. That pressure is shaping products designed to work inside real systems.
Wood says firms built under these conditions tend to be more durable, with more fully developed products, clearer use cases, and AI increasingly embedded to support their adoption.
For Canada, the challenge is applying innovation widely enough to affect outcomes that matter. Housing supply. Costs. Productivity.
Proptech’s maturity moment is quiet. It shows up in fewer announcements and more systems that hold.
Final shots
- Canadian proptech is being shaped by tighter capital and clearer expectations.
- AI is helping preserve knowledge as the construction workforce ages.
- Technology is becoming a “delivery requirement” for federal housing programs, moving government from regulator to lead customer.
