Montréal-based proptech startup Landerz has closed a $1.5-million CAD round of seed funding to develop and expand its public real estate platform.
The round closed on March 11 and was led by Accelia Capital with support from Investissement Québec. Previous loans and grants for Landerz totalled $770,000 CAD from the Business Development Bank of Canada, PME MTL, and Centre d’Entreprises et d’Innovation de Montréal, provided through the Société d’Investissement Jeunesse.
“We’re bringing a new approach to an opaque industry that still operates much like it did in the 1990s.”
Landerz, co-founded by Nadine Fournier and Simon G. Boyer, operates an online platform to simplify land transactions for sellers, brokers, and land developers. The platform aggregates environmental and economic data about land plots in a navigable map format.
“Access to real estate data and expertise has long been an opportunity reserved for a privileged few,” Fournier said in a statement. “We’re bringing a new approach to an opaque industry that still operates much like it did in the 1990s.”
The Landerz platform “is not for selling land, but for selling potential,” Fournier explained in an interview with BetaKit. The company also provides real estate expertise and off-market opportunities to those who use their platforms, all to make transactions more efficient.
“We are really bringing together the best of technology and high-value services to help those transactions happen.”
Landerz claims its platform cuts out the inefficiencies posed by land transactions, such as “navigating through multiple channels, consolidating scattered data, and negotiating with inexperienced and sometimes poorly advised sellers.” Canada’s current housing crisis requires 3.5 million more homes by 2030, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Landerz says its platform can identify development opportunities and accelerate deals to help achieve this goal.
“Landerz’s vision of creating a one-stop shop for property developers and landowners aligns perfectly with our belief in innovative solutions that transform industries,” Christine Beaubien, co-founder and managing partner at Accelia Capital, said in a statement. Accelia aims to support Québec technology startups, particularly those that are women-led or women-owned.
The public platform allows users to see the total land area, cost per square foot, and type of development. Using tools such as machine learning, Landerz intends to incorporate information such as zoning regulations, price comparables, and different satellite views. These additional data layers will make it easier for brokers and developers to make informed decisions, according to Director of Marketing François Royer Mireault.
Landerz is also developing a marketing plan that includes targeted digital advertisements, email outreach, and networking at industry events such as RéseauTerrain and Startupfest. Fournier said they achieved over a million dollars in sales without investing in any marketing efforts, other than their website. “Now, we really want our brand to be out there and people to associate land with Landerz,” she said.
The company currently operates with about 20 employees, but it wants to triple the number of Landerz-affiliated brokers and fill human resources, engineering, and management roles.
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The proposed expansion has an educational aspect, too: Landerz says it will use the funds to develop a training program for real estate professionals that will cover the ins and outs of land transactions and technological tools to facilitate them.
The seed round comes at a time when the Canadian proptech sector is seeing promising growth, with $1.5 billion CAD invested despite the challenges of high interest rates, according to a 2023 report. Nearly half of Canadian proptech firms were based in the Greater Toronto Area as of 2022, allowing Landerz to fill a unique role in the Québec market. The team is looking to expand beyond Québec’s borders in the future, however.
“There’s land and land needs everywhere,” Fournier said. “The housing crisis is prevalent in a lot of locations [….] It’s relevant for any market. So we’ll see how fast we can grow and how big we can become.”