Real estate market domination with the support of technology

In recent years, real proptech has become a growing trend in many countries around the world. Proptech makes it easy to connect between parties and providers. Thanks to technology, search, comparison, transaction and more become more convenient, flexible, fast and economical.

Digitalization of real estate - the inevitable trend

In the early stage, proptech was born to post information on the Internet about real estate properties for sale. In the next stage, proptech development is associated with the sharing economy along with the transformation of the way of using different types of real estate, typically the introduction of Airbnb platform in 2008.

Currently, proptech is in the third stage of development with modern technologies such as Big Data, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and blockchain. Realizing the great potential and growth of proptech, many investment funds seized the opportunity to pour capital with the amount of up to 75.2 billion USD (according to EY and CREtech) including outstanding platforms such as Hover, Compass, Opendoor, RealtyShares, Purplebricks, just to name a few.

In Vietnam, real estate digitization is also the direction of many corporations and large enterprises through investing or acquiring proptech startups. With a young population structure, 64 million Internet users, accounting for about 66 per cent of the population, the scale of the real estate market is expected to reach 21 billion USD, so proptech in Vietnam has many favorable conditions.

The data of FinREI Investment JSC shows that in Vietnam, proptech is blooming with 56 companies and many other startups. Of these, 80 per cent of proptech platforms are foreign companies or are funded by foreign investors, according to the JLL report.

The proptech market in Vietnam is still in its infancy, but interests investors. For example, real estate technology platform Propzy has completed a US$25 million Series A funding round from two investors – Gaw Capital and SoftBank. Another proptech, Homebase, has just received million-dollar investment. Startup RealStake successfully mobilized investment from 500 Vietnamese startups and angel investors.

Technology is considered to be the key factor that makes a difference and success for the real estate business in Vietnam. Real estate enterprises that own technology will have a golden opportunity to break out and dominate the market.

That Cen Land acquires 100% of Cen Homes shocks the real estate market

Vietnam proptech market is more vibrant when Cen Land joined the game. Recently, the company announced to complete a "billion-dollar deal" to acquire 100% of Cenhomes.vn - a pioneer proptech platform in Vietnam.

Statistics of Cen Homes development in 2020

Cen Homes is known as a make in Vietnam proptech platform. Since its launch in May 2019, Cen Homes has updated in terms of technology and achieved impressive figures. In 2020, the number of users is 377,592, the number of sessions is 478,613. Website https://cenhomes.vn/ has an average of 250,000 visits/month; Cen Homes app has reached over 24,000 downloads. Currently, the platform is offering about 500 projects, an average of about 3,000 posts/month and about 800 successful transactions.

The strength of Cen Homes is the application of modern technologies such as AI marketing, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). The core factor that makes Cen Homes breakthrough is Big Data and online real estate valuation in partnership with Cen Value - a leading valuation company.

With the attractiveness of Vietnam's proptech market and outstanding technological advantages, Cen Homes draws attraction of many domestic and foreign investment funds, valued at up to tens of millions of dollars. In the sprint to own this platform, thanks to strong potential and agility, Cen Land has surpassed many other competitors to acquire Cen Homes.

This specific move helps realize a strong investment strategy for digital transformation to perfect the ecosystem of Cen Land. Thereby, Cen Land maintains its leading position in the real estate market in Vietnam and reaches out to the national level. With the ambition and financial capacity, technology and experience in the market, Cen Homes is expected to become the first Unicorn in this field in Vietnam.

After the acquisition of Cen Homes, Cen Land plans to increase capital and a part is to invest in Cen Homes technology so that Cen Homes becomes a super app to bring optimal user experience.

Acquisition of Cen Homes is expected to strengthen and increase the intrinsic power of Cen Land. Cen Homes is effectively supporting Cen Land's business activities and is expected to contribute to the development of Vietnam's real estate market.