PropTech in a Recession

Everyone is a genius in a bull market

“A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor”

- Franklin Roosevelt

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We are officially in a recession. Okay.

To paraphrase Churchill, there is always opportunity in crisis and I see a few trends that I thought worth mentioning. 

Looking at the content below, I realize that I went full Packy and ended up with a pretty long article. Sorry, but I thought it was important to be thorough and contemplative on some aspects of the market.

As such, I broke this up into sections - Owners, Startups, VCs, and Overall. With each section, I tried to break down a few key concepts and trends. I also tried to add a “Clever” play to sections where I see a strategy that will differentiate the exceptional players from the average ones.

To be clear, I’m not really making any pronouncements on how long or how bad a recession will be. I’m not smart enough to know that. I just wanted to contemplate trends and behaviors in PropTech if the current recession continues for a few more quarters. 

So, here are a few thoughts and predictions to chew on. Let’s start with real estate owners since they are our customers in PropTech and if they aren’t spending dollars on tech then we are all sunk. 

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OWNERS

• Appetite for New Technology - Rorschach

I’ve written about this recently, but I think a recession is a Rorschach test for PropTech. I don’t need to repeat the points here, but I think an extended recession will show us who are the long-term players in PropTech and who was just tire-kicking. The long-term group will have a largely unchanged appetite for innovation and the most forward-thinking will actually increase their desire for innovations.