Knight Frank backs new £116m fund to help grow proptech firms
The estate agency is among a large clutch of global property firms looking to make a killing from the European market for residential and commercial tech.
Knight Frank is one of 17 property firms to invest £116 million into a new proptech fund which is now looking to back start-ups in Europe.
Other big names in the Fifth Wall fund BNP Parisbas, which owns Strutt & Parker and UAE property giant DAMAC Properties, which is also active in the UK.
Fifth Wall is a US-based tech fund that now has some £22 billion in capital under management and until now has focussed largely on the US.
The new European fund will have a London HQ led by Roelof Opperman and Miguel Nigorra and will invest in proptech start-ups that have already survived the early ‘seed money’ stage and are looking for later A, B and C-series funding.
Knight Frank is relatively new to the Fifth Wall investment club having joined only a year ago.
“We are thrilled to expand our firm into Europe as we aim to replicate Fifth Wall’s position as the leading proptech investor in North America with this expansion into Europe and Israel,” says Brendan Wallace (pictured), Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Fifth Wall.
“The success of Fifth Wall’s model is premised on identifying the leading proptech companies and accelerating their growth through Fifth Wall’s global network of more than 90 strategic investors.
“Having so many of the leading European real estate firms supporting our European Fund will enable us to help accelerate the expansion of the proptech ecosystem in this part of the world.”
The fund has already completed investments into fast-growing startups, including Clikalia, the leading Spanish Ibuyer platform.
Fifth Wall says the European proptech market represents 20% of all global proptech activity in 2021, including €3.8 billion of venture capital investment in over 200 deals, which includes many UK proptech firms.
Though Fifth Wall has only existed for about seven years, it already has nearly a hundred investors worldwide and a cohort of real estate players. Wallace & Greiwe being visionaries who saw that the property asset class was woefully behind, and its analogue axis was ripe for change. They have a large portfolio including Opendoor, ClassPass etc.
The bigger kicker though is that realestate or estate agency corporations are realising that it makes complete sense to be ‘investing’ in the digital hand tools that they will be utilising.
Many agents wrongly see property technology as the enemy, rather it is the here and now, and strategic investment in great tech that will ultimately leverage your own business is a double win, as when companies exit for multi-millions or even billions, there are huge profits to be made.