Weekly Radar

Weekly Radar #326: Smoking Wood, $100M in Doors, Proptech Index Down 4.96%

Geek Estate Team

Nov 18, 2024 • 5 min read

Image generator: DALL-E Prompt: Create an image of a factory line producing different parts of a house like a front door, chimney, porch, roof

In this Weekly Radar, we cover:

Doorloop raised a $100 million Series B to expand its property management software, but lacks differentiation in a crowded market dominated by established players like AppFolio, RealPage, and Yardi.
Plantd's grass-based building panels, now adopted by homebuilder D.R. Horton, present a sustainable alternative to traditional lumber signaling a potential industry-wide shift toward greener construction materials.
The GEM Proptech Index was down 4.96% last week.

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Geek Estate Blog Recap:

Transmission Recap:

This week, Rivers Pearce argues that the evolution driven by AI from “point and click” to “describe and done” is poised to finally unjam the current residential real estate tech adoption impasse. Before that, Drew Meyers posited that ownership in rooms is the next natural progression to improving affordability...think communes as a service.

CLIMATE

SMOKING WOOD
By: Logan Nagel

A North Carolina startup assembling structural building panels for wall sheathing, roof decking, and subflooring out of grass, Plantd recently signed a deal to provide home builder D.R. Horton with enough grass-based panels for 90,000 homes. The perennial grass Plantd builds with is similar to bamboo (20+ feet tall; rapid growth). The benefit of grass is largely the growing time: A pine tree can take a decade and a half before cutting for lumber, whereas perennial grass can be harvested up to three times in a season. Beyond that, there’s an obvious climate benefit–avoiding tree deforestation. According to Fast Company, “The first 10 million panels will sequester 165,000 metric tons of CO2, and avoid cutting down 1.2 million trees.” Plantd’s math says 17 trees are saved per house built.