Proptechbuzz’s public chatstream went ablaze for the past 24 hours, with proptech CEOs and CXOs from around the world weighing in on Costar’s blockbuster $1.6 billion acquisition of Matterport. The enthusiasm was palpable from the outset, with participants voicing excitement to engage in this new global proptech chatstream. The lively discussion saw thought leaders dissect the deal’s implications from all angles – market consolidation, competitive dynamics, future trends, and more. We consolidate the best insights and opinions from the chat stream in this article.
As Ravi Kumar Sapata, founder of ProptechBuzz, triggered the conversation after the acquisition news in the chatstream, an air of curiosity and optimism resonated throughout the chatstream.
Giri Devanur, CEO of ReAlpha provided incisive analysis stating “ The acquisition of Matterport by CoStar Group represents a significant development in the real estate technology landscape. By combining Matterport’s pioneering 3D digital twin capabilities with CoStar’s extensive data and analytics resources, the new entity has the potential to drive further innovation and adoption of this transformative technology.”
The chat coalesced around a vision for technology driving the next renaissance of how we transact in residential and commercial real estate. Savviest builders eagerly united to collaborate on accelerating proptech’s revolution through industry-redefining innovation and consumer experience transformation. The chatstream buzzed with unique perspectives around proptech’s paradigm-shifting potential to revolutionize how we transact and experience real estate. Competitors converged as collaborative innovators, sharing audacious visions of tectonic industry shifts.
Joshua Kuchar, director of marketing and sales from ShowAmi, offered a unique perspective and astutely pointed out “This is CoStar’s response to Zillow/Showingtime’s new listing features. Virtual showings lead to longer time on site, boosting SEO and ad space. Some buyers will purchase homes from a virtual tour.”
Dialogue swirled around strategic motives and rippling impacts as participants ideated on what this mega-deal symbolized for proptech’s growth trajectory.
These visions included the rise of immersive 3D residential experiences, “one-stop shop” proptech juggernauts, and visualization platforms guiding customer journeys from pre-construction through transactions. Interesting predictions emerged around AI-powered “digital twins” of properties globally, metamorphosing antiquated mechanics. Virtualizations unlocked new battlegrounds where incumbents could enhance marketing metrics and monetization by harnessing immersive property tours for more than just conversions. Underpinned by exponential tech valuations, a recurring theme centered on immersive visualization catalyzing paradigm shifts in how consumers interface with real estate. The nascent chat stream attained escape velocity, uniting bright minds to catalyze proptech’s ascension in disrupting century-old residential norms.
Giri Devanur, NASDAQ listed CEO of ReAlpha: “The acquisition of Matterport by CoStar Group represents a significant development in the real estate technology landscape. By combining Matterport’s pioneering 3D digital twin capabilities with CoStar’s extensive data and analytics resources, the new entity has the potential to drive further innovation and adoption of this transformative technology. However, there are also concerns that this deal could reduce competition and limit the ability of smaller, more agile startups to disrupt the market. It will be important for regulators to carefully examine the potential impacts on pricing, choice, and innovation within the real estate tech ecosystem.”
Vivek Agarwal, Co-Founder & CTO | Square Yards & PropVR: “Real estate search & discovery will move away from textual listings & map-based searches towards a more immersive real-life experience. This acquisition of Matterport by Costar is likely to steer the industry in this direction and potentially transform digital real estate marketplaces. With this and the rise of spatial technologies, the era of 3D real estate exploration is quite near. Our group subsidiary PropVR is focused on creating real-world high-quality 3D digital twins of major cities of India and the Middle East (starting with Dubai). Keep watching this space for more.”
Scott Petronis, Founder & Principal Consultant | Xcentric Consulting, LLC: “This is both vertical integration on the listing side of things and incredibly beneficial content for buyers. Smart move on CoStar’s part. I do wonder about how the hardware business will continue to play in the mix though.”
Jaison Thomas, Founder and Managing Partner | Trinity Ventures Inc: “I think it’s a good move by Costar. They are always miles ahead in this space and know where the puck is going to be. Capturing over 300,000 virtual tours already, CoStar will cement itself in this space. Matterport has over 12M spaces captured in 177 countries. Clearly, things are moving digital and we will see how things play out over the years with artificial intelligence in this space, especially paying over 10x 2023 revenues.”
Sharad Agarwal, CEO | HomeTrack: “This is a win-win for both companies. CoStar continues to vertically integrate and Matterport was struggling to get to profitability. I would expect to see more consolidation coming.”
Farhan Junaid, Founder | Viewit: “This is a great acquisition however matterport as far as I know still requires some hard skills to be able to put a virtual together. Further, they have yet to port a decent app to mobile and this will remain stagnant until mobile LiSAR technology improves dramatically. All iPhones past 12 have a LiDAR camera but they are at a very nascent stage even today and are unable to pick up a room in 3D as effectively as a Matterport camera. Once this tech is adopted to a mobile then you’ll see real scale and growth amongst small to mid-size agencies who can’t afford current Matterport solutions.”
Adrian Danila, Founder | Multifamily X Consulting: “I expect more acquisitions/consolidations in the space. The one-stop shop Amazon model looks very appealing to customers. Service providers know that and they are moving towards meeting these expectations.”
Harvey Hancock, News Editor | Online Marketplaces, Harvey Hancock Freelancing: “This is a big story. Firstly, Matterport is pleased to have a very profitable owner in CoStar – it has struggled financially for some time. Second and what nobody has mentioned so far is that integration of the tech will happen on both sides of the Atlantic. Jason Tebb at OTM will be delighted with this as it gives OnTheMarket a highly differentiated and superior offering over Rightmove. The question is, with one European portal under his belt and a juicy tech firm to integrate into it, where will Andy Florance look next? P.S. It’s somewhere in Europe, and it’s gonna be expensive.”
Kiran John, Managing Director | Terapact: “Very interesting. In fact, while companies like Matterport primarily cater to brokers in the secondary market, the entire visualization space for launch projects is still fairly nascent. At Terapact, we’ve been building an end-to-end visualization-to-action platform for online and offline sales. Our thesis is that Technology needs to be a catalyst on the web as well as in the hands of sales reps. The other area I feel this is very powerful is when projects are just at planning stages. The first 10 to 15 percent of revenue can be driven entirely on experience and creating confidence to invest off the plan.”
Josh Kuchar, Director of Marketing and Sales | Showami: “I’d say this is CoStar Group’s response to Zillow/Showingtime’s new listing features. From the looks of it, each portal is making moves in the virtual showing space. Why? Virtual shows have a longer time on site, which leads to SEO boost + ad space. Additionally, some buyers will purchase homes from a virtual tour.
You can bet other portals (Redfin, Movoto, and others) will be eyeing virtual tour companies for acquisition. However, something both virtual tours have in common is the floor plan walk-through. This feature appears to be a differentiator and is of high interest to consumers. I’m curious to see if IDX companies or even MLS’ begin to partner or acquire virtual tour companies…
Startups in virtual showings space: I don’t see more companies creating new startups in this space, but rather virtual showing enhancers (Staging, VR manipulation, etc.)”
Bayo Ibirogba, CEO | Mappa: “Building innovative proptech is expensive and adoption can be slow -so Matterport’s difficulty getting to standalone profitability is pretty understandable. Expanding into adjacent markets later to juice revenue can dilute focus + increase competition. However, this is the only way we’ll get the innovation we need in the space – the large real estate portals lack the incentive to build groundbreaking tech in-house (but they have the balance sheets to support it). Acquisitions like this give the big guys a faster path to innovation, whether it’s to gain a competitive edge (likely rationale), finally improve the end-to-end user experience, or signal (to their stakeholders) a strategic shift towards innovation.”
“Matterport’s $1.6B acquisition by Costar” was a great topic to start global chat streams. We will launch many more important topical chatstreams weekly where global leaders and professionals can share their insights and opinions freely. The best insights and opinions make it to our media article like this.
As Ravi relayed, the global proptech community chat is “MVP and gradually we intend to build a lot of exciting features…including GLOBAL CHATATHONS, support for rich text, social feedback and people tagging. Since the platform only allows for verified profiles, it massively reduces spam comments”
Look out for many more interesting real estate and proptech topics in Proptech Buzz Global Chat Stream.
By Proptechbuzz
By Ravi Kumar
