“The founders that are building today are building businesses that don’t look at growth at all costs,” says Stephanie Wood, Vice President at Alate Partners. “They’re building sustainable businesses with unit economics that really make sense.”
That sentiment framed a proptech market overview hosted at TechTO’s headquarters inside StartWell in Toronto, one of many events taking place during Toronto Tech Week. Founders, investors, and operators gathered to take stock of where real estate innovation stands today.
The sector has grown, matured, and encountered headwinds, but many of the companies still standing are quietly transforming how buildings get financed, constructed, and managed.
This is not a story of early-stage hype. It is a story of industries gradually reshaping how they operate as technology becomes embedded into core systems.
In 2021, Proptech Collective was tracking around 300 startups across Canada. As of 2024, that number has grown to more than 550. But the funding environment looks different than it did even a year ago.
“In 2024 we saw $800 million go into proptech startups,” says Wood. “That was actually half of the number raised in 2023.”
Nearly 65% of Canadian startups in this space remain at the seed stage or earlier. The industry is still young in many ways, but exits are starting to become part of the picture. Over the last five years, more than 65 exits have taken place in Canadian proptech according to research presented at the event, with a median time to exit of eight years. These include both large headline-making deals and quieter combinations of smaller firms.
As for locations — the geography remains heavily concentrated. About 45% of Canadian proptech startups are based in the Greater Toronto Area, followed by hubs in Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, and Kitchener-Waterloo. Construction technology still makes up a smaller portion of the sector, but its share is growing.
“It is a long game,” says Wood. “You’re not going to build this app and sell it right away. You need staying power.”
But that staying power is being tested with higher interest rates and tighter capital flows. Now, companies are shifting away from growth-at-all-costs and focusing on business fundamentals. Wood suggests this shift may ultimately strengthen the sector by forcing clearer unit economics and sustainable models.
Robotics and AI take on housing supply constraints
Canada’s construction sector faces a well-known set of challenges: labour shortages, slow productivity gains, and growing demand for housing.
Ramtin Attar, Co-Founder and CEO of Promise Robotics, described the blunt reality, saying the construction workforce is aging, with 20% of workers approaching retirement and an estimated shortfall of one million workers across the US and Canada.
Promise Robotics believes robotics and AI can change that equation.
The company’s system converts building designs into detailed robotic instructions, enabling off-the-shelf industrial robots to fabricate building components in microfactories close to where they will be assembled.
Attar described how quickly their system can complete the structural shell of a building, saying that in a single day, crews can move from laying the foundation to enclosing the full structure.
“By the time you had your afternoon coffee, you have locked up the entire house,” he says.
With additional hours, crews can complete larger units. “Two more hours, a full semi. Two more hours, a fourplex.”
For larger buildings, the timeline still compresses dramatically. “In two weeks, a 64-unit condo from ground all the way up, fully locked up.”
The model reduces timelines and emissions, enabling mass customization.
“Our robots can build one home today, an apartment tomorrow, a townhome the next day,” he said, citing the solution as a way to tackle Canada’s housing shortage.
The company’s growth is already crossing regions, with two microfactories operating in Alberta and plans to expand across Canada.
Its approach reframes the role of tradespeople entirely.
“We are creating jobs of the future,” says Attar. “Framers are now participating in the digital flow. They are doing less physically demanding tasks, but they are still core to the process.”
Adoption remains as much a mindset challenge as a technology one. Builders are often quick to react to market risk, but slower to embrace long-term operational shifts. “The homebuilding industry is really good at seeing long-term risk, but not long-term innovation,” says Attar.
Transaction infrastructure moves into the background
While construction is grappling with scale and labour, residential proptech often targets customer experience and transaction complexity.
Robert Saunders, Co-Founder and CEO of Ownright, found the gap through personal experience.
“I looked to my real estate agent and said, ‘Okay, where do I send the money? How do I get the keys?’ And he said to me, ‘Who’s your real estate lawyer?’ I had never used a lawyer for anything in my life.”
That experience led to Ownright, a digital-first real estate law firm that simplifies the closing process. Buyers track their progress in an online platform, complete tasks, communicate with the legal team, and sign documents virtually. A live closing-day tracker keeps clients updated in real time.
In Canada, residential closings generate around $2 billion in legal fees annually. Ownright offers pricing 25% to 30% lower than traditional law firms while embedding its services into partner platforms, positioning itself as transaction infrastructure rather than just a standalone legal service.
“You can think of a Visa or MasterCard, but for real estate,” says Saunders.
Launched in 2023, Ownright has already processed more than 1,000 closings and crossed $1 billion in transaction volume. Its API platform allows other real estate platforms to embed legal services directly into broader transaction flows. As real estate companies look to control more of the customer journey, legal remains one of the final disconnected pieces and Ownright aims to close that gap.
Climate risk forces a new financial lens in commercial real estate
In commercial real estate, the conversation shifts again. Here, the issue is not consumer experience or labour but long-term financial risk.
“For any building owner that does not have a climate mitigation plan, you are looking at a 40% reduction of annual returns by 2030,” says Sheida Shahi, CEO and Co-Founder of Adaptis.
Adaptis helps building owners evaluate capital planning decisions in the face of climate, decarbonization, and regulatory complexity. The platform promises 20% capital savings by using faster, data-driven models that replace expensive, slow-moving consultant teams.
One of Adaptis’ most important insights challenges a common assumption: that better environmental performance necessarily drives higher costs. A recent study across multifamily projects found no consistent correlation between improved building performance and higher construction prices.
Shahi emphasizes that asset managers increasingly view this work through a financial lens.
“Asset managers on our platform are planning for 2050. They may not say anything about being sustainable or green, but they are looking at the highest return on investment and the lowest risk for their pension funds and LPs.”
Building companies that can endure long enough to reshape the system
The proptech overview presented during Toronto Tech Week offered a snapshot of a sector moving beyond its early experimentation phase. What began as a wave of category creation is now maturing into a market shaped by operational realities. The companies still building are not chasing novelty and are now embedding into core infrastructure, aligning with incumbent industries, and addressing complexity head-on.
Construction leaders are tackling capacity constraints with automation that redefines labour models. Residential transaction platforms are pushing fragmented processes toward full-stack integration. Commercial asset managers are shifting sustainability conversations into long-term capital resilience. And across all of it, the companies gaining traction are those that have accepted real estate’s long timelines and deeply entrenched decision-making cycles.
“The founders who are building right now are inventing businesses that work inside the reality of this industry,” says Wood. “They are not waiting for market conditions to change. They are designing companies that can withstand them.”
What was once seen as the next frontier for real estate technology is now becoming something more permanent. It is a necessary layer inside the systems that shape how buildings get designed, financed, and operated. The pace is slower. The challenges are more layered. But the companies that navigate it may end up shaping the next generation of the built world.
