Proptech Trends in 2025: How Real Estate Technology Is Finally Growing Up

Remember when "proptech" was just a fancy way to describe putting property listings online? Those days feel like ancient history now. We've come a long way from the early 2000s when Zillow was revolutionary just for showing home values on a map.

Back then, most real estate technology was about digitizing paper processes, moving listings from newspapers to websites, replacing fax machines with email. It was helpful, sure, but it wasn't exactly groundbreaking. Fast-forward to 2025, and we're looking at a completely different landscape where artificial intelligence in real estate and property management automation are reshaping entire workflows.

The Wild West Years Are Over

The 2010s were proptech's Wild West era. Everyone with a smartphone app and a PowerPoint deck was promising to disrupt real estate. Remember when every startup claimed they were going to be the "Uber of real estate?” Most of those companies are footnotes now, but they did something important. They got the industry comfortable with the idea that real estate technology solutions could solve real problems.

The pandemic accelerated digital transformation across the board. Suddenly, virtual tours weren't nice-to-have features, they were essential. DocuSign went from optional to mandatory overnight. Property managers who resisted digital rent collection found themselves scrambling to set up online payment systems. The industry had to evolve fast, and many discovered they actually liked working this way.

Now we're seeing something different among the best proptech companies. The gimmicky apps and flashy demos are giving way to commercial property software that actually makes people's jobs easier. Commercial real estate professionals, in particular, aren't asking "What's the coolest tech?" anymore. They're asking "What's going to help me close more deals?"

Why CRE Technology is Finally Ready for Prime Time

Here's what's changed in CRE in 2025: CRE deals are starting to pick back up again, and everyone's realizing they need an edge. CRE lending alone hit $498 billion in 2024, up 16% year-over-year, while overall U.S. CRE transaction volume surged to $757 billion, up from $672 billion in 2023. On the Crexi platform, we saw the average number of days on market drop 14.35% YoY for Q2, across four primary asset classes. All promising signs of market improvement and during such a time, nobody wants to spend three weeks putting together a market analysis that could be done in three hours with the right automation tools.

Commercial real estate has always been more complex than residential. There are far more variables, more stakeholders, more ways for deals to fall apart. That complexity used to make it harder to automate, but it's actually where modern CRE tech shines. AI now supports roughly 37% of automatable tasks across leasing, property, and risk management, and 81% of CRE leaders say they’re directing growth budgets toward data and technology. 

Previous proptech waves were about moving existing processes online. This generation of commercial property software is about rethinking how work gets done in general. Instead of digitizing a paper lease, we're asking why leasing has to work the way it always has. It creates entirely new ways to find opportunities, serve clients, and build lasting business value in an increasingly competitive market.

The best proptech companies today aren't trying to replace human expertise, they’re enhancing it with AI. A commercial broker can still spot a great deal, but now they also have the time to analyze market data, run financial models, and compare opportunities using property analytics, all at a speed that wasn't possible before.

The next couple years will separate the real property tech solutions from the also-rans. Companies that understand the day-to-day realities of CRE work will thrive. The ones still trying to reinvent everything from scratch with flashy tech will struggle.

Digital transformation in CRE isn't about replacing the fundamentals, the relationships, local knowledge, and the insights into what makes properties valuable. Proptech makes it easier to focus on those fundamentals by handling the routine work more efficiently through automation and AI-powered property analytics.

The Bottom Line on Proptech in 2025

We're not at the beginning of the real estate technology revolution anymore. We're not at the end, either. We're right in the middle of the part where commercial property software, property management automation, and AI in CRE actually start working the way they were supposed to all along: together. 

Learn how Crexi is building the future of proptech for your business needs.