Proptech Startup Failures

An AI appraisal platform whose revenue model was held hostage by the CRE transaction drought.

Airbnb for people who hate Airbnb's service quality. 17,000 employees later, Chapter 11.

A $1.7B parking tech bet drowning under acquisition debt and slower-than-promised AI rollout.

Fractional rental shares for $5 — until the platform froze withdrawals like a crypto exchange.

Kushner's real estate tech platform sold for pennies as CRE market imploded

iBuying pioneer raised $1.9B and went public at $18B SPAC valuation — 2022 mortgage rates hit 7%, lost $1.4B in Q3 2022 alone on inventory purchased at 2021 prices, $18B valuation collapsed to $700M by 2023

A rental listings giant that couldn't survive the leap into fintech payments.

Tech-managed short-term rentals across four Latin American cities. The tech couldn't make hospitality margins work.

Chile's property management startup raised $35M then collapsed as rising rates and currency volatility destroyed the rental model

Cash-offer proptech ran out of air in the rate-hike downdraft

The corporate furnished apartment marketplace that COVID killed and Airbnb-for-business finished off

Built commercial real estate intelligence just as CRE imploded.

Colombian prop-tech that raised $35M from Tiger Global and then watched three markets collapse at once.

iBuying raised $1.5B and SPAC'd at $3B — mortgage rates rose 3%→7% in 2022, per-home losses averaged $20K+ in Q3 2022, 70% staff layoffs November 2022, stock fell 98% from SPAC valuation

Britain's estate agent disruption ended for £1

The marketplace for distressed homes — when distressed sales dried up and rates rose, there was no business left

We are a tech company. We rent offices.

Co-living's biggest US brand discovered that scale without profitability is just expensive furniture.

Roommate-matching tech that couldn't solve the oldest problem in real estate: maintenance costs.

SFR marketplace pivoted to metaverse real estate and paid the price

The UK flat-fee estate agent that conquered Britain, then lost $200M expanding to markets where the model did not translate

Rent-to-own homes built on cheap debt that the Fed took away

The $6.4B tech-powered real estate brokerage that discovered technology does not change commission economics

Door-to-door leasing tech had a 18-month payback period no one would fund through.

Digital title startup built on refi boom had nowhere to go when volume vanished

The lease-transfer marketplace that hit a wall every landlord, lawyer, and state law put in front of it.

8,000 landlords, zero willingness to pay enough to survive.

Colombia's $800M proptech unicorn collapsed as rising rates froze the housing market it depended on

Making all buyers cash buyers — until rising rates made the trade math impossible

A wellness-building empire worth $237M that couldn't survive post-COVID office budget reality.

Machine learning for title insurance at $3.23B. Sold for $6.29M. A 99.8% discount.

The $1B+ prefab homes unicorn that raised $400M and never reached production scale

Dutch fractional real-estate tokenisation platform raised €8M but suspended operations in 2023 as ECB rate hikes eliminated retail investor appetite for illiquid property tokens.

The iBuying giant that proved algorithms cannot outsmart rising interest rates.

The real estate portal that tried to break Australia's property duopoly and ran out of money.

Canada's Opendoor discovered iBuying is catastrophic when housing prices fall.

Home trade-in startup that couldn't survive the housing correction

Flat-fee real estate agent replacement that couldn't outlast the correction

Tech-enabled real estate brokerage. Rate rises killed transactions. 800 layoffs.

Brazil's iBuyer unicorn that hit $2.9B at the peak — and laid off 60% of staff as interest rates killed the residential market

China's property market collapse dragged its largest online real estate platform down with it.

A lien-rights SaaS acquired for $500M then dismantled inside its acquirer.

Brazilian proptech unicorn. Real estate downturn. 150 layoffs in 2022.

The AI interior design startup that raised $70M to democratise professional design — shut down overnight in June 2022 with no warning to employees or customers

The all-in-one real estate platform that combined buying, selling, mortgage, and closing — and burned through $100M trying to own every part of the transaction

The UK proptech that promised to sell your home in 10 days — and ran out of cash trying to honour that promise.

The real estate startup that tried to bypass MLS and Realtors with AI — and discovered that ignoring the incumbents was a fatal strategy

A smart office comfort app killed by the remote-work revolution that emptied the buildings it served.

Spain's first real estate crowdfunding platform — shut by the regulator that once approved it

iBuying pioneer. Fed rate rises doubled mortgage rates. Opendoor lost $1B in a quarter.

The 3D spatial data platform that SPAC'd at $2.9B in 2021 and saw 90% of shareholder value evaporate by 2023

Asia's co-living pioneer discovered that Singapore's government is the ultimate property manager.

The power buyer startup that raised $460M to make homebuyers competitive, then collapsed when the market it was built for disappeared

A blockchain rent platform that tenant advocates, regulators, and gravity all conspired to kill.

The iBuyer that bought thousands of homes just before interest rates doubled

Mexican iBuyer that raised $20M to purchase and resell homes with instant cash offers — shut down in January 2022 after 18 months when the iBuyer model proved unworkable in the Mexican real estate market.

Costa Rica proptech pivoted from rentals to vacation stays and got killed by a 13% tax overnight.

The home trade-in platform that raised $220M to help people buy before they sell — undone by the same rate shock that killed its competitors

Brazil's most valued proptech. Rate rises. 300 layoffs. Valuation down 60%.

The Airbnb-meets-hotel startup locked into thousands of multi-year leases right before travel collapsed

Argentine prop-tech backed by Khosla Ventures that bet on a real-estate market in freefall.

The algorithm that was supposed to price homes perfectly lost $880M and 25% of the company's jobs

The WeWork competitor that raised $400M to lock up flexible office space in every major city — then COVID emptied every office on Earth simultaneously

Argentina's real estate classifieds platform swallowed by a Uruguayan competitor after never cracking profitability

AI that predicted broken appliances—couldn't predict its own demise.

Mexican real estate marketplace caught between a recession and a pandemic with no bridge round.

The Airbnb-backed startup that gave homebuyers down payment money in exchange for Airbnb hosting rights — until COVID made hosting impossible

The office management startup that raised $89M to bring the gig economy to corporate facilities — then was acquired by WeWork for less than it raised, and wound down when WeWork imploded

The world's third-largest hotel chain. 12,000 layoffs. COVID finished the expansion.

The co-living startup managing $20M/month in Bay Area rent — shut down overnight when COVID made communal housing a liability

The $160M furnished apartment-hotel startup that was poised for its IPO when COVID eliminated short-term rental demand overnight

Google's $50M smart city dream died on data privacy and democratic distrust.

A construction data platform for big landlords that never scaled beyond early adopters.

An AI copywriting tool for real estate agents that discovered agents won't pay for productivity.

A Sunday email to investors announced the sudden death of a European real-estate crowdfunding pioneer.

India's homestay OTA. Founder arrested mid-shutdown. Unprecedented Indian startup crisis.

The dot-com real estate portal that faked $390M in revenue. Multiple executives convicted. $10B peak.

Cyprus's property tech startup hit the TAM ceiling of an island market and regulatory complexity

NestAway raised 100 million dollars from Tiger Global and Goldman Sachs to manage furnished rentals for India young urban workforce — and sold to Housing.com for approximately 12 million dollars in 2022 after COVID destroyed its rent collection model.

Digital funeral services startup that could not modernize a reluctant market

The Brazilian rental unicorn valued at 5.1 billion dollars that cut 450 jobs and shelved its IPO plans

Lisbon's construction project management SaaS was squeezed by Procore's European expansion

German hybrid real estate agency that raised 130 million euros combining agents and technology before the German property market collapsed in 2022.

Chile's proptech that the 2019 social crisis and a contracting housing market buried

North Macedonia's short-term rental platform was killed by COVID in its growth year

Andreessen-backed Colombian real estate marketplace that survived Series B only to collapse on rate hikes.

NYC digital commercial real estate brokerage that raised $13M and closed as office demand collapsed post-COVID.

Sydney fractional property investment platform that raised $12M AUD and shut down when rising rates made leveraged fractional property the worst-of-both-worlds investment.

Flexible housing startup raised $160M from Fifth Wall and shut down in 2023 as hotel-apartment hybrid economics collapsed with rising rates.

An Indonesian apartment rental platform that ran for eight years before the post-COVID real estate correction killed its model.

Lisbon student accommodation marketplace raised EUR 32M, reached 100K+ listings globally, and imploded when COVID eliminated student mobility.

The Italian iBuyer backed by Goldman Sachs and Exor raised 600 million euros and collapsed when rising interest rates destroyed the economics of buying and holding residential real estate at scale.

Austin iBuyer bridge-loan startup raised $135M to let buyers make all-cash offers and shut consumer operations when rising rates made its bridge model unworkable.

iBuyer that bought homes instantly for cash from sellers who wanted to move without the stress of a contingent sale

A $300M co-living startup with properties across Europe and the US that was wiped out by COVID within weeks of its peak.

The iBuyer that forgot Mexican real estate runs on notaries and trust

Homeloop brought the Opendoor iBuying model to France — making instant cash offers on homes — and stopped buying properties entirely in 2022 when rising interest rates made every home purchase a guaranteed loss.

UK fractional property investing app shut by FCA regulatory requirements before reaching scale

Furnished apartment search engine for international tenants in Europe

Housfy promised Spanish homeowners they could sell their properties without paying traditional real estate agent commissions — and shut down in 2023 after failing to reach the transaction volume needed to sustain its flat-fee model.

Smart apartment access system SPAC'd at $1.56B — interest rates killed new apartment construction, which was its only real market

Venn raised $100M to transform entire city neighborhoods into curated living communities — then discovered that managing people at neighborhood scale is not a scalable business

German furnished apartment marketplace for corporate nomads filed insolvency

Urban micro-storage startup ran out of space and cash simultaneously

The Madrid coliving and room rental platform that raised 5 million euros serving young professionals and students and closed when it could not scale beyond a niche market

The mid-term rental platform backed by Kleiner Perkins that COVID turned into a ghost company

Brazilian digital real estate brokerage raised 40 million reais to cut commissions and speed transactions but Brazils historic interest rate spike in 2022 destroyed its entire addressable market.

Better UX than Idealista, but Idealista had the listings

The Spanish room rental app that attracted Airbnb investment and then shed 60 percent of its team

Tenant experience app for offices killed by remote work

The proptech that couldn't digitize the Dominican Republic's relationship-driven real estate market

Mexico City proptech startup raised $20M to modernize apartment rentals and shut when the 2022 funding freeze made its next raise impossible.

iBuyer pioneer that went public at $18B via SPAC and saw its stock fall 97% as rate hikes destroyed the model.

Spanish vacation rental metasearch engine acquired by Holidu and absorbed into its European holiday home platform.

Romanian proptech helping Eastern Europeans buy abroad ran out of runway in the rate hike era

The iBuying startup that held $10B in homes when mortgage rates doubled

London flexible office marketplace raised over $30M to replace WeWork and shut down when the remote work shift permanently collapsed SME office demand.

Spain's hybrid real estate disruptor undone by Idealista's dominance

Madrid co-living proptech that collapsed almost instantly when COVID-19 lockdowns emptied shared housing.

Ucommune raised $800M to become China WeWork — then WeWork itself collapsed and Ucommune delisted from NYSE in 2022 after losing 98% of its market cap

French rental investment proptech that raised 38 million euros to simplify buying and managing investment properties and filed for bankruptcy when rising French mortgage rates made investment property purchases collapse.