The real estate industry is the single largest contributor to Canada’s gross domestic product, and when you factor in construction, its footprint is even larger.
Real estate has become so important to Canada’s economy that the country has also emerged as a growing hub for property technology, or proptech. Proptech is the use of software and hardware to improve how people build, develop, buy, sell, rent, and manage real estate.
This year kicked off with a flurry of new Canadian proptech funding, acquisition, and product announcements from companies like real estate AI assistant Mave, multi-family rental software provider Rentsync, and tenant verification platform RentZoro.
While the sector has matured, it has also faced some recent challenges, as outlined by Proptech Collective’s fifth annual Proptech in Canada report.
A “tight” proptech fundraising market
Proptech Collective’s 2025 report tracked 590 Canadian proptech startups actively working to tackle problems across the country’s real estate industry, including firms building solutions designed to help address some of Canada’s pressing housing affordability and supply issues. The report found that only one quarter of those startups were launched in the past five years, a seven-percent drop from 2024, which the authors identified as a signal of “a maturing ecosystem.”
“Investors are more selective and want to see more traction earlier.”
Stephanie Wood,
Proptech Collective
But the report also determined that companies in the proptech space still face an uphill battle raising venture capital (VC). This “tight” fundraising landscape and an increased focus on AI among startups and industry partners helped reshape Canadian proptech in 2025, report lead Stephanie Wood told BetaKit.
Wood, who also works as VP at Toronto proptech VC firm Alate Partners, said that AI has been “the biggest tailwind for investment and adoption we’ve seen across the proptech and [construction tech] industry,” adding, “It’s impossible to ignore.”
On the fundraising front, the report found Canadian proptech startups secured $450 million CAD across 30 disclosed funding rounds in 2025, a steep drop compared to the 50 that closed during the peak of the market in 2021.
While this marks a significant decline in total VC investment and a slight increase in deals compared to 2024—when $800 million was raised through 27 financings—that amount was juiced by a mega-round closed by Hostaway, a Finland-headquartered short-term rental software firm with Canadian roots.
Wood noted that “investors are more selective and want to see more traction earlier,” adding that “valuations, for the most part, have been lower in Canada, even prior to the reset in the market. This seems to be even truer today.” She argued these conditions have been a “forcing function” that has made the country’s surviving proptech companies stronger.
“In 2026, the Canadian proptech industry entered a more stable and mature era,” Wood said. “It is no longer a growth-at-all-costs model [as] startups are focused on building lasting businesses with clear product-market fit and sustainable growth rather than rapid expansion.”
Industry opens up to AI adoption
A lot of the money deployed in 2025 was concentrated on AI-focused proptech startups, Wood said. She said she has also been seeing greater “openness” from real estate and construction firms to adopt proptech and AI via projects and partnerships.
Toronto-based Mave, which is developing an AI platform for realtors and brokers, offers one example of where the market’s attention and investor dollars have focused. Mave founder and CEO Raz Zohar told BetaKit that AI has forced brokerages to reevaluate their approach to customer support. Zohar claimed that Mave’s tech has already helped its clients automate some of the back-end labour associated with facilitating home-buying and selling.
“Ultimately, the goal is to help alleviate work for real estate agents and let them do what they do best: sell homes,” he said.
VCs are focusing less on “broad narratives” and more on product engagement and traction.
This week, Mave announced $5 million CAD in seed funding to fuel its product development and North American expansion plans. That all-equity, all-primary capital round, which was led by new backer Staircase Ventures with support from existing investors Relay Ventures, Alate Partners, and N49P, closed last summer, and brings Mave’s total funding to $7 million.
Zohar said that while fundraising, he noticed that investors cared less about “broad narratives” than “real product engagement and measurable traction,” crediting the startup’s success to its growth and usage. (Mave claims that it is actively onboarding 8,500 realtors and dozens of major Ontario brokerages, with 70 percent of clients leveraging its platform weekly.)
Firms shy away from fundraising
Proptech Collective’s report indicated that investment in proptech companies at the earliest pre-seed and seed stages was flat year-over-year, accounting for a combined 64 percent of the overall share. Growth rounds for more established proptech businesses, however, were relatively scarce, with only 10 of over $10 million apiece.
The latter group included Montréal-based home energy company Dcbel’s $55-million financing, a $24.5-million round from Calgary cleantech firm Carbon Upcycling, which is working to reduce the carbon footprint of cement, and Toronto-based Augmenta’s $14.4-million fundraise to expand its AI-driven building design software.
According to Wood, rising investor expectations and the emergence of AI for product development has led to more pre-seed Canadian proptech companies approaching VCs with initial offerings and paid pilots—a stark contrast compared to previous years. She added that domestic proptech firms that have attained the revenue typical of a seed-stage startup have increasingly chosen to refrain from fundraising altogether and prioritize profitability instead.
Tech has made it much easier for Canadians to buy, sell, and rent homes, allowing them to search listings, submit applications, and find lenders online. AI has already had an impact on this process, but while it has been a boon for some startups, if misused, it may not always be a good thing for the average Canadian. As the US Government Accountability Office has warned, it could drive up rents, perpetuate lending biases, or put consumer privacy at risk.
Startup formation wanes
The report also found 34 new Canadian proptech startups were founded last year—down slightly compared to 36 in 2024 and a nearly 36 percent decline relative to the 53 companies launched annually in both 2019 and 2020, with the fundraising market a likely contributor.
For her part, Wood is not worried about this drop in startup activity. “There are a healthy number of companies being founded—not all are going to succeed and it was, candidly, a bit too frothy at the peak of the market,” she said.
Toronto-based Leasly, which is building a platform that aims to make subletting “stress-free,” is among the Canadian proptech companies that formed last year.
As for proptech companies at the other end of the startup lifecycle, Proptech Collective found that exit activity in 2025 was “muted,” with most liquidity events coming via mergers of equals or strategic mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Wood expects to see “steady ongoing consolidation” this year as more companies seek to buy or sell via such deals amid continually cool public market conditions.
Toronto-based Rentsync, which sells software that helps rental housing owners and operators manage their properties, has already pursued strategic M&A in 2026, purchasing its second company in two months. In December, Rentsync snapped up Vancouver’s Spacelist to accelerate its move into commercial real estate. Last week, the company followed that up with another data-focused deal by buying Toronto’s Urbanation for its seventh acquisition to date.
“These acquisitions expand Rentsync’s data advantage and increase product stickiness, which aligns with the broader trend of consolidation as larger companies add capabilities rather than building everything in-house,” Wood said.
Rentsync CEO Max Steinman told BetaKit that this year, Rentsync intends to continue exploring strategic M&A that could help it bring new products and services for real estate professionals to market faster.
Build Canada Homes a possible tailwind
Canada faces some pretty big, longstanding housing affordability and supply changes right now. To what degree these sorts of proptech innovations will be able to move the needle on these fronts remains to be seen.
For her part, Wood anticipates that domestic proptech innovators—especially companies focused more on construction—could benefit from the federal government’s push to increase the country’s affordable housing supply and support modern construction approaches through its new, $13-billion Build Canada Homes agency.
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“It would be great to see the government and those running this initiative leaning into national and local technology, as well as supporting homegrown startups that can help expedite delivering housing,” Wood said.
Wood cited Canadian proptech startups building zoning tools (such as Montréal-based Landerz), businesses in prefabricated or modular housing (like Toronto’s Promise Robotics and Cabn) and firms selling field management software (such as Kitchener-Waterloo’s Bridgit and Winnipeg’s ConstructionClock), as examples of areas where domestic innovation could help.
Feature image courtesy Mave.