PROPTECH PANEL: Proptech 2026 - Opportunities and Challenges

Proptech Australia hosted its first Proptech Panel on Wednesday, 28 January. The session focused on the landscape of property technology for 2026, highlighting the opportunities for members and the broader real estate industry.

The discussion featured three new Proptech Australia board members, each of whom brought a different perspective of the sector:

• Josh Callaghan (Little Hinges): As co-founder and CEO of Australia's largest digital twin provider, Josh shared his expertise in strategy and property data. His background includes roles as COO of the REIQ and co-founder of Fintech Queensland.

• Sev Thomassian (Domain): Currently the Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer at Domain, Sev leads strategy, partnerships, and M&A. His previous experience included management consulting at McKinsey and corporate law at Ashurst.

• Matthew Larwood (StrataVote): As CEO of StrataVote, the leading software platform for the strata industry in Australia and New Zealand, Matthew focused on tech outcomes for customers and business management in the creative and property sectors.

  
  

The panel discussed how market leaders are responding to current economic shifts, emerging governance obligations, and technology advances. The session was designed to help attendees refine their 2026 strategy and better understand the trajectory of Proptech in 2026 and beyond.

Transcript: 

Kylie Davis: Welcome, everyone. If you're joining us, my name's Kylie Davis, I'm president and founder of Proptech Australia, formerly Proptech Association Australia, and you'll probably hear me saying that Proptech

Kylie Davis: And then stopping myself during this conversation. Just to kick off, an acknowledgement of country, it is…

Kylie Davis: I'm here today on the lands of the Turbal and Jaggera peoples. I'm actually in Brisbane today, and before I begin in the spirit of reconciliation, Proptech Australia acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We are an industry that understands the importance of place.

Kylie Davis: We pay our respect to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples joining us today. And I'd especially like to thank the fabulous support of Stone and Chalk.

Kylie Davis: who make all of our Proptech panels possible. If you don't know Stone and Chalk, it was founded as a not-for-profit in Sydney in 2015 to help fintech startups commercialise and grow.

Kylie Davis: And from 40 startups in 2015, it now has well over 200 startups in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, covering all areas of emerging technology, including Proptech, of course.

Kylie Davis: And they now, there's about 20, plus proptechs that call Stone and Shork home, and in the last year, they've moved away from Wineyard up to the brand new, fabulous tech building in Pitt Street. So, if you are in the area, in Sydney for the day, and need a spot to, prop while you do some meetings, or base yourself.

Kylie Davis: do check it out. They've got a fabulous open, general area.

Kylie Davis: Now, let's kick off. The Proptech landscape is evolving at the moment in breathtaking space, and that is going to continue in 2026. And it's presenting both sophisticated hurdles.

Kylie Davis: And unprecedented opportunities, both for ourselves as technology businesses, and for the real estate and property industries that we're serving.

Kylie Davis: We have economic shifts, we have new governance obligations, we have the ever-present tech breakthroughs, especially, of course, in the field of AI, and it is going to be an action-packed year.

Kylie Davis: So, who better to help us unpack this in the residential space? And just a short pause there while I say we will be looking at the commercial impacts, in a couple of months. But in the residential space today, we have some of our newly appointed board members for Proptech Australia, Josh Callaghan from Little Hinges.

Kylie Davis: G'day, Josh.

Josh Callaghan: G'day, great to be here.

Kylie Davis: Fabulous to have you. Sev Tamassian from Domain. Welcome, Sev. Or, do we say Domain Coaster, or…

Kylie Davis: Oh yeah, can I just say Domain?

Sev Thomassian: The Domain brand's strong, so you can keep using Domain, but now part of the CoStar group. Thanks, Kylie, great to be here.

Kylie Davis: Great. And, Matthew Larwood, from Stratosaurus in Adelaide. G'day, Matt.

Matt Larwood: G'day, Colle, how are you? Good to see you.

Kylie Davis: It is great to have you all here. What I wanted to do was just sort of kick off a little bit with, what you saw were some of the highlights of 2025, or what changed, what rocked your world the most in 2025 before we start to get into the 2026?

Kylie Davis: leads. Who would like to go first?

Kylie Davis: Go, Matt.

Matt Larwood: I'll go first. Well, we had a pre-chat on this one, and there was a fair amount of alignment amongst the panellists, so I thought I'd get it first, and.

Kylie Davis: My goodness.

Matt Larwood: I had something new to add and interesting. So, we're seeing in 2025, sorry, so the question was, what do we see in 2025?

Kylie Davis: Yeah, yeah, 25, yep.

Matt Larwood: Yeah, I think a continued growing awareness of the, not only the role of, technology in the strata space, but also, how far behind we are compared to other industries, as I mentioned before.

Matt Larwood: our company, not our product, but our company was called Stratosaurus when we came into the industry, you know, only around 10 years ago. We were very surprised by what we saw, and there's… there's still a fair bit of that,

Matt Larwood: It's slow churn, things are evolving slowly, and we did see, some green shoots with regards to people's

Matt Larwood: Realisation and understanding of what's possible now, as opposed to what they've been told.

Kylie Davis: Yeah, I think that's a great comment too, that, like, We are an industry of different segments and sub-segments, right? And not everybody is moving at the same pace, and we have examples of… and I think the residential proptech sector is really interesting because.

Kylie Davis: the sales and property management side have moved into technology a lot earlier than other parts of the industry, like strata and even parts of commercial. Josh, what are you seeing?

Kylie Davis: What did you see?

Josh Callaghan: 25 was pretty big news in our area in particular, because obviously, working in, you know, digital, virtual tours and creation of content, we had

Josh Callaghan: CoStar bought Matterport, which, although effectively was 24, did settle in 25, then followed by their acquisition of Domain, which definitely shifted sands there, and then REA's acquisition of iGUIDE as another capture technology that is trying to be pushed into the space.

Josh Callaghan: So, so that is, yeah, that changed a lot of the sand in our area, and will no doubt spur on.

Josh Callaghan: I guess the next tranche of innovations and opportunities, because once… once something like virtual inspections becomes ubiquitous across listings, which it's almost inevitable to come in the next 24, sorry, next 12 to 24 months.

Josh Callaghan: You know, that builds an entire ecosystem of innovative opportunities and new proptechs, but they were the big shifting sands in 25 that I think will reverberate in the next couple of years.

Kylie Davis: And there's a few interesting things in there, isn't there? Because virtual has been around for, what, 15?

Josh Callaghan: More than, yeah, 10, 15 years, yeah, absolutely.

Kylie Davis: time I saw it at Inman, like, back in my CoreLogic days, so…

Josh Callaghan: Yeah, that's right.

Kylie Davis: Yeah, yeah, and even and we're seeing that lag, aren't we, from experimental tech being sort of that fifth… you know, and QR codes, God, how long did they take to come on board, and then suddenly everyone was using them. So what at the moment is the uptake of virtual?

Josh Callaghan: Yeah, it's still on platform, it's still, you know, it's still in that single percentage, like 5-6%, you know, of listings will have a virtual tour. Typically, I think in most adoption curves, you know, of technology, once it gets beyond that 10% to 15%, it then…

Josh Callaghan: enters into the… into the mass market and becomes ubiquitous. We've seen it in so many other pieces of content, though. You think about

Josh Callaghan: you go back 15 years, and most listings on RealEstate.com for sales didn't have a,

Josh Callaghan: Didn't have a floor plan. And now it's just

Josh Callaghan: absolute bare minimum. Same as professional photography. You know, we used to get 3 professional photos done for the weekend newspaper, and then when it first… when portals first came online, they're just uploading all sorts of random point-and-shoot, you know, photos.

Josh Callaghan: And then over time, that became, oh, now I need 15 highly polished, professional, staged, you know, angled photos, and that became ubiquitous. You know, virtual tours.

Josh Callaghan: Consumers love it, they scream for it, and so it's sort of the natural next

Josh Callaghan: You know, ubiquitous content piece that… that is now, finally, being pushed by the big boys as well.

Kylie Davis: So let's go to one of those big boys, Sev, there you go.

Josh Callaghan: Sick one.

Sev Thomassian: Oh, it's the first time I've been accused of that.

Kylie Davis: How's that for Segway?

Kylie Davis: So, 2025 was a very big year for you guys at Domain. What did you see were the big things that impacted you, including your CoStar purchase, I'm assuming?

Sev Thomassian: Yeah, great question, Kylie, and that's probably the place to start, because it's a game changer for Domain and what we're able to do in the Australian property market.

Sev Thomassian: So, 2025, we're now part of the CoStar group, so that transaction completed at the end of August last year, and 6 months later, we're already seeing a lot of change and a combined roadmap in terms of taking a lot of the technology that CoStar has globally, and then getting ready to deploy that in Australia.

Sev Thomassian: So, one of the key aspects that Josh mentioned, just building on it, is virtual inspections. And CoStar's got Matterport, which is the leading product in the space. I'd encourage everyone on this call today, if you haven't already, jump online, have a look at it.

Sev Thomassian: The technology is, like, absolutely stunning, so virtual inspection technology has been around for a while, but like any technology, it's evolved, and right now it's at the point where it's… it's amazing, and it becomes important for so many things. When people buy a home.

Sev Thomassian: Or a property.

Sev Thomassian: It's often the biggest investment decision of their lives.

Sev Thomassian: But the amount of time they spent researching that property, or actually walking through it.

Sev Thomassian: seeing what the living room's like, thinking about what they can change, what they could renovate, having a look for any issues around the house. You've got these 30-minute windows of inspection time you've got to be in or out.

Sev Thomassian: And most people I know spend more time, you know, browsing and doing their diligence on the next TV purchase than they do on their house, just because we're allocated these 30-minute windows. So, virtual inspections are going to be an absolute game changer.

Sev Thomassian: One of the reasons is because you actually get to spend enough time looking around the property.

Sev Thomassian: You know, everyone jumps very, very much straight to, you can check out many more properties from the comfort of your living room, and that is true.

Sev Thomassian: But also, you know, the level of diligence, thinking through renovation plans, you know, it's impressive in terms of what Matterport can do in terms of starting to help you think through those possibilities. That's got to be an absolute game changer.

Sev Thomassian: Josh said something interesting in terms of the adoption rates, and it's true that these solutions adopt very quickly.

Sev Thomassian: Property is also very hyper-geographical, so we don't even have to drive adoption in Australia in aggregate. What often happens is you'll have Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, or some of these, you know, they're seen as leading markets around the country, where in some of those sub-segments of those markets, you'll get

Sev Thomassian: quicker adoption of these technologies, because as soon as in a smaller geographical area, like a few suburbs where people are searching for a home, as soon as they see virtual inspections on some of the properties, all the others very quickly follow. And so that's why I think

Sev Thomassian: Building on Josh's view, the acceleration curve for adoption is going to be very steep.

Sev Thomassian: So for us, it was

Sev Thomassian: It was becoming part of the CoStar group, and I can talk about that more, more in terms of what that means for us later on, if that's helpful as well, Kylie, but also some of the other technology that we're deploying, and you can see some of Domain's future roadmap by looking at what CoStar are building out with Homes.com in the US. So, for example.

Sev Thomassian: Another showcase solution is interactive voice search and property walkthroughs on Homes.com, and you get a sense for what it's like searching for properties just using your voice rather than typing in queries. So, there's quite a lot of technology that started in 25 that's going to be a game changer for the future.

Kylie Davis: Cool, okay. It does sound very exciting, and look, you know, full disclosure, Mark and I are selling our place in Sydney, and we are using Little Hinges, we've done a virtual walkthrough. Hilarious feedback from my husband when we first saw the walkthrough, which was, oh crap, do we need to fix the concrete outside the front of the gate, because it was so detailed, he could see that there was a crack in the pavement.

Kylie Davis: That's a counselor's job, that's not…

Josh Callaghan: Yeah, yeah.

Kylie Davis: That, just the extraordinary detail was phenomenal. Anyway, look, a lot of this is, you know, there's huge amounts of computing power in this, in all of these things, and, and I guess that's one of the big trends that we're seeing in 2026, just how much extra grunt is out there for some of the AI and,

Kylie Davis: big chewing through this data that we're doing. Josh, what are you seeing in terms what are the three things that

Kylie Davis: You're seeing for 2026 that you think are going to impact us the most?

Josh Callaghan: I think, I think one of the biggest trends in 26 will be, an acceleration or the continuation of the sharing of data and new data points. There's so much rich data out there in the world, in the property world, that is.

Josh Callaghan: That's completely unseen at the moment. A good example is, you know, our internal property data set that allows you to, you know.

Josh Callaghan: you know, get condition features and detail basically every component piece of a property in the internals, which is completely unseen at the moment. I think that's…

Josh Callaghan: You know, when we talk about hyper-personalization, or voice-related search, or moving beyond… or even AI search, agentic AI, and that sort of thing.

Josh Callaghan: The problem is it's always going to be limited by what the data is, and if you can only see lot size and a few standard data points from, you know, misguided photos or inaccurate floor plans, it's not going to be enough to actually create the hyper-personalized experiences that people expect. And so I think we'll see a huge,

Josh Callaghan: huge spike in that, and the availability of that, and AML helps that a little bit, because, then all of a sudden, you know, there is a framework in Rails for customer data and all that sort of stuff to be, you know, properly dealt with, within the industry. The second thing is hyper-personalization. I think

Josh Callaghan: you know, all the portals and anyone in the direct-to-consumer space is under threat of, of AI. It's too early to pick a winner, but it's clear that it's a significant threat, and if they

Josh Callaghan: If that space doesn't accelerate quickly with hyper-personalization and giving people exactly what they want, when they want, and not having to be… you know, we're going through the process of looking at houses at the moment.

Josh Callaghan: I'm effectively a manual house

Josh Callaghan: Flicker. You know, I can set my faceted searches as, you know, with whatever's available there, if I even believe that, you know, what's been input is accurate.

Josh Callaghan: And then, but then I'm still delivered, you know, 5 new listings a day, or whatever, that I have to manually go through, and I'm applying, you know, a level of quantifiable, you know, assessment to that, but

Josh Callaghan: it can't be captured or matched up or anything, because the data doesn't exist. So high personalization will definitely be a big race this year. and then the last one, I should probably have to go to my notes so that I'm… oh, well, the last one we've already spoken about, virtual tour penetration. I think when you've got… you've heard Sev…

Josh Callaghan: you know, talk about how excited they are internally about Matterport and what that does to transform the industry. REA are definitely doing the same thing, and with the same level of excitement in using iGUIDE. There's other propositions out there as well, but I think

Josh Callaghan: You know, it is what customers want, and we've, you know, we've had, since we started, more than 12 million unique users that have used our virtual tours. Like, it's, you know, we see the engagement. To Sev's point.

Josh Callaghan: over those 12 million, the average session time is more than 4 minutes, but you'll get, like, 5 or 10% of users that are actually spending, like, a couple of hours virtually going through the property, if when they get really interested. And so yeah, so no doubt, I think 2026 will look back as one of the years that

Josh Callaghan: That it really hit its stride, the adoption of virtual tours.

Kylie Davis: Now, there's a lot that sort of goes straight to Sev, but I'm gonna just hold off on that and go to Matt. So, Matt, what were the three… what are your tech trends that you're seeing in the strata space?

Matt Larwood: Are these tech trends that I'm seeing, or I would like to see?

Kylie Davis: Well, that's up to you. I'm gonna let you…

Matt Larwood: Let's say I would like… and I like the term hyper-personalisation, I'm going to steal that and be the first one in Strata to talk about that, so thanks, Josh, for that terminology. So…

Kylie Davis: sharing.

Matt Larwood: Well, speaking of sharing, integration, interoperability.

Matt Larwood: is one of the big trends that I hope will continue to grow legs in strata in 2026, is, there's ground being made, as I mentioned before.

Matt Larwood: But I think the issue is that the end consumer doesn't know what's possible, so there's an educational process, there in the first instance, and then once you see the light bulbs going off, then the demand starts to grow, and people get it and want more. So,

Matt Larwood: That's one of the big things that I can see as a trend. The data side of things is also going to become more critical. Now, that's from a few different perspectives.  It's from an internal

Matt Larwood: business management perspective to help you sharpen everything you do and do a better job there. But it's also, really, I think, people outside Strata wanting access to information that only lives in Strata, for significant purchasing decisions. So.

Matt Larwood: I love the concept of virtual tours and all that kind of stuff like that, but how do I know when I'm buying a house, whether the insurances are appropriate, whether the sinking fund has been maintained and things have actually been fixed properly? How do I know a whole lot of things that

Matt Larwood: affect that purchasing decision and the resale value of your property that only really exist in Strata at the moment, and so I can see an extension of that, integration, interoperability outside Strata and into real estate as well. So if there's anyone out there who's listening who's keen for a further chat on that, then hit me up. But I think that the silo

Matt Larwood: Will be broken down,

Matt Larwood: Obviously, AI is becoming more and more prevalent, but the thing that's happening, though, is that everyone's rushing in and thinking that it's a cure-all for everything that's going on, and we all know

Matt Larwood: with leading edge technology that, that's only half the answer, and so I expect to see a maturing of the understanding of the role that AI can play in strata, and with that, we'll become

Matt Larwood: Quite sensible development, in, in the platforms.

Matt Larwood: And utilizing AI effectively. And the last one I wanted to talk about was maybe this is the type of personalization version in Strata, so more of a focus on customer-centric design. A lot of technology in the old days wasn't really designed from the customer's perspective.

Matt Larwood: And people, as I mentioned earlier, people got what they got, not what they wanted or needed, and so I can see a growing trend toward provisioning information more effectively through portals. I can see people at the other end being able to access more information more easily, see more transparency.

Matt Larwood: And, people taking back, you know, power and ownership of what effectively is their data as well. So, that's a trend, and therefore platforms that facilitate that, are definitely on the money, and we'll see more of that happening in 2026.

Kylie Davis: There's such an interesting kind of overlap of all of these things. I think the strata industry is

Kylie Davis: So fascinating, because and worth reflecting on in this context, because we have 

Kylie Davis: In Strata, you have multi-million dollar properties with tribal politics.

Kylie Davis: Because, you know, and, you know, multi-million dollar properties requiring extraordinary professionalism in order to, you know, stay valuable, retain their value, but then very localised, you know, tribal politics that are, you know.

Kylie Davis: letterbox by letterbox kind of, level, and not necessarily a huge amount of skill, in terms of strata committees, not necessarily having a huge amount of, educational awareness around what they absolutely need to do, being led by

Kylie Davis: A cottage industry that is

Kylie Davis: replicating property management at huge, kind of, scale, almost. Like, you know, dealing with complexity.

Matt Larwood: Yeah, I agree with that, and I think we see lots of counterintuitive decision-making happening in strata, very short-term thinking, so

Matt Larwood: Let's not get an insurance valuation to check out how much we should be insured for, because that's going to cost us more, and we don't want our levies to go up. Hmm, okay, that makes a lot of sense.

Matt Larwood: Another example is, let's not invest in proactive maintenance, because that's going to cost us more. Our levers are better. Hmm, 10 years' time, things are falling apart, and I can't wait to sell what I can't sell because of the issues that I've caused, so…

Matt Larwood: you know, someone living in an owner-occupier compared to an investor who lives across the other side of the world have competing interests as well. So, we see all those, small battles on a building-by-building basis, and I think that the industry would acknowledge that it did start off as a cottage industry, but

Matt Larwood: It's now becoming more and more professionalised, and that includes in New South Wales, there's a requirement

Matt Larwood: to provide formal committee training, and I'm sure that will spread across the country. So, we'll see more and more of those things emerging, in order to ensure that the industry as a whole continues to mature.

Kylie Davis: Yeah, awesome, awesome. Yeah, but I think you're also dealing with a lot of the similar challenges to what the, property management industries

Kylie Davis: like, general property managers also deal with, so I think there's some bit of overlap there, too. Sev, let's go over to you, because all of these things are kind of playing into your space.

Kylie Davis: What were your trends that you were seeing? Like, this whole idea… I guess we're seeing two things. We've got more data coming out of Strata, more data coming out of virtual, like you were saying before, voice-activated search,

Kylie Davis: What else is an agentic AI, as opposed to just LLM AI? What else are you seeing?

Sev Thomassian: Great question. The one I want to start with, Kylie, is you hit the nail on the head. You've talked about data centres and the explosion, and there's an article in the Sydney Morning Herald today, I'm not sure if you've seen it, but

Sev Thomassian: It's predicting that at their peak, the data centres currently plan for construction in Sydney would take four times as much power as all of Sydney's residential dwellings. So, I think that just gives everyone

Sev Thomassian: an appreciation of the scale of what's planned in terms of data, not just in Proptech, but beyond, but it gives you a very good feel for what's coming our way.

Sev Thomassian: In terms of trends overall, so, for me, the hyper-personalized discovery experience that we've talked through is going to be a massive trend. The only part I'd add there is, I think traditionally, for a long time now, search on portals has been conducted through the search bar.

Sev Thomassian: And what we're going to see is a move from the search bar to beyond the search bar, it'll be search bar plus. There'll be a lot of personalized content, all the way through to the digital property walkthroughs that we've talked about before.

Sev Thomassian: The second part is, I think there's a big opportunity, and there's a big trend on consumer insights.

Sev Thomassian: And traditionally.

Sev Thomassian: If we look at the property transaction and who's held the key information, agents have been at a very unique point where they've held quite a lot of information, both on the sell side and the buy side, and they've been very key for making transactions happen.

Sev Thomassian: Real estate agents have played and will continue to play an incredibly important role in making real estate transactions happen in this country.

Sev Thomassian: I've got a very strong belief that that is not going to be ordered away… automated away, at least anytime soon.

Sev Thomassian: I think they're absolutely pivotal. However, one of the key trends is buyers are screaming for more insights.

Sev Thomassian: It's not just data, but it's data-driven insights that consumers want. And so, at Domain, and you see this with some of our competitors in the market as well, we're moving towards giving buyers, or giving consumers broadly.

Sev Thomassian: Much more detailed insights into properties and the property buying experience. Now, I actually think that's a net positive for the industry overall, because as soon as you build trust in a transaction.

Sev Thomassian: you drive transaction volumes. It removes one of the frictions. 

Sev Thomassian: And so what I expect to see in 2026 is a move towards greater customer insights, but that effect is going to resonate in subsequent years, where we're going to see increased transaction volumes in some of the outer years, as there's going to be much more confidence coming into the market.

Sev Thomassian: The point that you also asked about was, AI, and how AI is going to evolve. And

Kylie Davis: Yep.

Sev Thomassian: What we've seen is 2025 was very much built around GPTs, or the use of LLMs into products, and we started seeing some green shoots. Some of the examples that I've talked about before, like

Sev Thomassian: you know, the voice, property search, and it's effectively a conversation where you're talking to AI about the type of property you'd like to purchase. AI is answering and giving you back options, and, you know, you could do this in the car, or you could just do it with your laptop open, no fingers on keys needed.

Sev Thomassian: And, you know, you can find a great property that way through this  voice interaction with AI. 

Sev Thomassian: And so we're starting to see some green shoots there, and by all means, that's going to keep growing.

Sev Thomassian: 2026 is going to be the year where we start seeing some interesting use cases in Agentic.

Sev Thomassian: And, in particular, AI agents that perform objectives across multiple-step workflows.

Sev Thomassian: Now, where most people go to straight away is cost out, right? They think if we're going to get agents, agents are going to replace humans, and it's going to result in cost out. I have a very different view. I don't think these are a game changer in cost-out opportunity. They're a game changer in customer experience opportunities.

Sev Thomassian: There is going to be a roadmap, and it's going to take a while, where these solutions are deployed, they're iterated on, and they start improving. There's going to be a human in the loop, which is going to be key, but at the end of the day, we're going to get to much better customer experiences through moving to an agentic world.

Sev Thomassian: So I think that's the trend we're going to start seeing some green shoots of in 2026.

Kylie Davis: So I wanna question you on this whole idea that you were talking about, on… It starts in the search bar. Whose search bar?

Kylie Davis: In 2026, because is it in the REA or the Domain search bar, or is it in Google's search bar, where I start saying, I want a 4-bedroom home with, you know, two bathrooms and 2 car spaces in XYZ suburbs for around this price? Where do you see that? Do you see that  changing?

Sev Thomassian: Great question, and thank you for asking the tough questions, Kylie, because this is one of the… this is one that's been flagged as a big challenge for portals, not just in Australia, but globally. Especially with, you know, Google stated intentions in terms of being more active in the property search space. And you know, there's a lot of AI giants or other giants, tech giants globally, trying to to move into, or thinking about moving into, how they can serve up, you know, some of these listings.

Sev Thomassian: But, I'd frame it as, for portals, first of all, standing still for us isn't an option. So, we always face varying levels of competition.

Sev Thomassian: and competitive threats, and that can include AI, and this is just the latest. Over the years and over the last two decades, there's been a series of threats, competitively to the business model. 

Sev Thomassian: But one of the core things about Domain and portals globally is we've always been able to progress, innovate, and at the end of the day, deliver what matters most, and that's wow our customers. And that's what we want to focus on as well going forward.

Sev Thomassian: I'd say AI specifically is both an opportunity and a threat, not just for portals, but for every player in the ecosystem.

Sev Thomassian: And so if we accept that, then it's really important to move quickly.

Sev Thomassian: So, talking through some of the things we're doing at Domain.

Sev Thomassian: One of the things we're doing is embedding AI into how we build products.

Sev Thomassian: how we operate as a business, and also how we're building our consumer search and engagement experiences. So, from Gen AI through to rethinking Discovery more broadly, AI is already woven into our current products, and what you'll see is it's going to be more and more deeply embedded into our roadmap.

Sev Thomassian: One of the biggest challenges, Kylie, for pure AI search is what happens after the first answer.

Sev Thomassian: So, property search quickly moves, if you're a property seeker, from, you know, a very simple property query into people wanting to explore photos, walkthroughs, past sales, see comps.

Sev Thomassian: Interact with maps, take measurements, understand, you know, solar requirements, or what they can do with solar, easements, and more.

Sev Thomassian: They want a deeply immersive experience that's a high-trust experience, not just a simple answer, which at the moment is what AI platforms are offering.

Sev Thomassian: So, any AI platform, if it was to compete, would need to go deep on those end-to-end experiences, which is where portals are dominated and the best position to respond.

Sev Thomassian: It requires highly specialised focus and support of a specific vertical.

Sev Thomassian: And AI, at the moment, is quite general.

Sev Thomassian: I'd also add there's some critical underlying factors that strongly position Domain and portals globally.

Sev Thomassian: And as an example, coming back to data, data ownership is incredibly important. So, we have a wealth of proprietary property data, and that gives us the enviable position when it comes to leveraging that data to build superior user experiences on top of that using AI.

Sev Thomassian: So, what happens is this becomes much more important in terms of what is the data that you own that's proprietary, and how do you activate that to build a better consumer experience?

Kylie Davis: Yep.

Kylie Davis: So, Josh, you mentioned before that you thought AML was going to actually help the data conversation. Like, can you elaborate on that a little bit more? Because this, like, the anti-money laundering trench, two, impacting real estate professionals, everyone in the real estate sector, pretty much, this year.

Josh Callaghan: Yeah.

Kylie Davis: It's the biggest piece of legislation we've seen on compliance roll out for a while. You've experienced it in the past with your fintech background.

Josh Callaghan: Yeah, yeah, that's right, yeah.

Kylie Davis: How do you think that's going to impact the privacy or data the conversation?

Josh Callaghan: Yeah, I think the, like, and everyone will have experience of it if they think about it, like, having all my backgrounds in finance and, mostly investment and retail banking and the, and so AML, KYC, anti,

Josh Callaghan: And, what's the other one? Anyway, haven’t been around for a while in that space.

Kylie Davis: Yeah.

Josh Callaghan: But it's… yeah, and so there's a suite of amazing products and really cool,

Josh Callaghan: what has happened in every industry as it's rolled out has been a 12 to 24 month friction period as they try and embed it, but then it just becomes like a… just a part of the process. What that allows further down the line though,

Josh Callaghan: is in the same way that, you know, you can go and have a Wyze account, a WallX account, a, you know, something in your main bank, and you've got, you know, some other, payment.

Josh Callaghan: yeah, I don't know, light rail's credit facility or something. You know, there is a interoperability and a connectedness that can come from those services because you're in trusted environments in each, and because they trust each other, it creates an ecosystem of,

Josh Callaghan: Much better data flow. You think about now when you go and apply for a home loan or a… or anything like that, it's no longer, you know, filling in 12 pages of little boxes on, you know, how much is your car worth, and how much is this worth, and, you know, it's now…

Kylie Davis: It still did that. It still did that the other way.

Josh Callaghan: You probably need a different broker, but the.

Kylie Davis: Oh, God.

Josh Callaghan: But now it's much more, you know, I provide in a third-party trusted environment, I provide my.

Josh Callaghan: you know, trusted details, and then everything else passes through in the background, and the plumbing is all digital and automated. So, I think that definitely… look, the transaction in property is clunky, and has way too many humans in the mix, and I, like you, Sev, I 100% believe that.

Josh Callaghan: There's always a role for the human. It's a large, trusted transaction. There's a role for  human. Same arguments I was having 15 years ago in wealth management, and investments, you know, when ETFs and everything were coming online. So, absolutely.

Josh Callaghan: humans in that mix, no doubt about it. But we can all stand back and go, geez, it's clunky.

Josh Callaghan: You go through a process where you send your same ID documents, which are not even secure, right? You're photocopying them, and faxing them, and…

Kylie Davis: emailing them.

Josh Callaghan: photos of them, and emailing them, and, you know, to, like, five different people along the property transaction, and no one talks to each other, and yeah, like,

Josh Callaghan: There's a lot that can be streamlined once we're all in a trusted environment and know that we can appropriately deal with personal information and customer and client details.

Kylie Davis: Okay, so you're saying that we're going to see benefits from AML once we get through the pain of it, which will be…

Kylie Davis: Enabling the… more of this enabling the,

Kylie Davis: the data flow around what  my property ownership, or what that.

Josh Callaghan: Yeah, and that's.

Kylie Davis: You know, allow us to do.

Josh Callaghan: Exactly, I see that happening in the, I guess, from sale downstream. That'll be the first place that gets,  automated and streamlined.

Kylie Davis: Yep.

Josh Callaghan: But it's also pre-sale, right? Like, when you think about the search process and whether I'm using buyer's agents in the mix, or whether I'm using other technologies in the mix, being able to be in a trusted environment where I'm identified, pre-qualified, maybe there's funding sitting there already.

Josh Callaghan: and being able to incorporate that part of the ecosystem together in a fully trusted environment. We've had to have

Josh Callaghan: 14-day building and pest, and finance clauses and all that sort of stuff, simply because that's the way that our, like, manual, untrusted, we don't know each other system has to flow. 

Josh Callaghan: I think this allows all of that to be blown out, and the opportunity for, I guess, leaders in the space to really reimagine what the purchase journey looks like.

Kylie Davis: Yeah, yeah, yeah, awesome, okay. So, and, and so, do you think that this… well, a question for the, for the panel, is the… is the role of Agentic AI going to be to actually

Kylie Davis: Grease the wheels sounds like the wrong analogy, but is it actually going to be to actually make it… make the movement smoother from one section of the data to… one section of the transaction to the next, do you think?

Kylie Davis: Is that going to be one of the roles of Agentic AI?

Sev Thomassian: I'm happy to jump in here. I think Agentic's gonna play many roles.

Sev Thomassian: I don't see it replacing the core transaction anytime soon, but anything supporting that, and a lot of the businesses at this stage, it absolutely will support.

Kylie Davis: That's alright, I've had one of them. Look, if anyone's got any questions, please pop them into the chat, so and we'll pull them up from there. One of the things that we have been asked, and one of the questions that I wanted to ask too, was.

Kylie Davis: around the economy, what we think that's going to do this year, and especially kind of the, you know, overseas, what's going on overseas in the US, which has always traditionally been such a bit of a leader in the proptech space. Do we see the power dynamics there changing this year?

Josh Callaghan: I don't want to take up all the airwaves, so I don't know if you want to jump in, Matt, or if…

Matt Larwood: I don't know too much. I mean, what I do know about our space in the US is that,

Matt Larwood: it's quite different. Homeowners associations are, tend to be massive beasts, and, there's not quite the legislation there,

Matt Larwood: As we have here. And so, in a way, Australia has exported legislation around the world, from a strata perspective, Canada, South Africa, Asia, the Middle East, New Zealand, Singapore.

Matt Larwood: So, maybe the trend goes the other way, you know, maybe as things progress.

Matt Larwood: they might see the need for a little bit more stricter legislation and a little bit more better governance, or different sorts of governance, but it's not a… it's not an area that we're exploring at the moment, but I don't see, in our space, I don't see anything coming

Matt Larwood: From the States and impacting, things.

Matt Larwood: In Australia, because the reality is that whilst the strata industry appears big from the inside, from the outside, it's not massive.

Matt Larwood: And, so it kind of sits as a bit of an island, quite separate from what's going on in the States.

Kylie Davis: Sev, with CoStar coming on, and you were saying before that, you know, homes.com.au is impacting a lot, with what's happening in the US, is that going to impact our bubble in property, or do we…

Sev Thomassian: Yeah, what I'd say is, the potential US Commission decoupling would be a significant structural event for the US market.

Sev Thomassian: But Australia's fundamentally different, and we're quite insulated. We already have a highly transparent, competitive market. We don't have the MLS model that the US does, and none of the associated fallout would happen here, depending on the pathway over there.

Sev Thomassian: what I would say is there is a not short-term, but a longer-term opportunity for proptechs in Australia to target the US market, because if that fallout continues and that decoupling continues, what's going to happen is the US market is going to start shaping up, and it'll look a lot more like the Australian market.

Sev Thomassian: Competitiveness and transparency is going to increase, and that is where the Australian market's already been for some time. Proptechs here are already tailored to and based around that type of market.

Sev Thomassian: And so, with that structural shift in the US, there'd be an opportunity for Australian proptechs in the medium to long term to look at branching over into the US market and meeting some of the new market demand.

Kylie Davis: Awesome. Josh, what do you think about what, the situation in the US?

Josh Callaghan: I'm, like, I'm definitely no, I'm definitely no MLS expert, and, and I'd usually default to Petrav for questions related to the US market, 

Josh Callaghan: But what I can… what I do understand of it, and certainly with the, NAR decision and decoupling of commissions, I think that forces a more open and, better connected

Josh Callaghan: sort of system in that MLS, in those MLS pipelines, I think the technology and the things that come out of that could serve the Australian market really well.

Josh Callaghan: We've got some really nice open pipelines, obviously, for delivery of listings and that sort of stuff, but we don't have the full connectivity that some of those MLSs offer, you know, upstream and downstream from the transaction, so…

Josh Callaghan: I think, yes, I think it's possible that some of the innovation out of that move.

Josh Callaghan: positively benefits the way that, you know, the data rails work here, in Australia.

Josh Callaghan: that's… as far as I've got an opinion on it.

Kylie Davis: No, fair enough.

Kylie Davis: So What about investment, though? Because we've always kind of looked to the US in terms of it being a great place to,

Kylie Davis: the, you know, the entrepreneurial investment story. How do we… how hard or easy do you think finding investment is going to be for proptechs in 2026?

Kylie Davis: You guys raising at the moment, Josh?

Josh Callaghan: We are… well, we will be soon. I wasn't expecting that question, but.

Kylie Davis: Sorry.

Josh Callaghan: Probably soon. The, yeah, look, it's definitely, yeah, there's headwinds in that space. So we've come out of, you know, a number of years ago, very, very low interest rates, and the hunt for yield globally was very strong. And so, having, you know, established

Josh Callaghan: And, and growing businesses in a, in a well-supported and known space like property was, was,

Josh Callaghan: it was… was popular. It was really good, to raise capital. That doesn't… that no longer exists. There's yield everywhere now. You know, you've got private credit funds, you know, underwritten by A-grade developments that are, you know, 10-15%, you know, I won't say risk-free, but certainly… certainly time-constrained.

Josh Callaghan: That reduces a lot of the risk out of it. There's… there's a lot of opportunity, and, you know, I mean, I…

Josh Callaghan: ASX and NASDAQ and all those are going really strong and providing great returns, and so, so it's very… and that… so there's a lot of other really good, well-established

Josh Callaghan: investment opportunities for people to put their money into, but then that's coupled with, exactly as you're saying at the start, and with all these great new proptechs that are solving problems, like, genuine good problems, but…

Josh Callaghan: there's an absolute proliferation of the number of proptechs that are competing for whatever small amount of funds are left. I think what that means is that, you know, if you're… you've basically got two angles. You've got… you're either a…

Josh Callaghan: a highly profitable, and can draw really clear lines from investment into a return on… a return on that investment. You know, we've got our economies set up, so every $100 you put in, we make $150 or something.

Josh Callaghan: And you can show that and prove it. Or, you're super strategically valuable to a large incumbent, whether that be through proprietary data sets, or a technology that they need to unlock, or a new channel.

Josh Callaghan: And you get… you get probably bought out, or certainly invested in with a… with other, you know.

Josh Callaghan: little strings attached, you know, by the big guys who need that strategic leg up. I think… I think that's sort of where the market's going now. If you're… yeah, if you pre-profit, certainly if you're pre-rev, and you're…

Josh Callaghan: you know, you're trying to sell off a PowerPoint, the days for that have probably gone.

Kylie Davis: Yeah, right.

Kylie Davis: So, what's Domain's appetite now? Are you still going to be looking for acquisitions or investments in 2026?

Sev Thomassian: So, I think, if I look at the market generally, I think 2026 is going to be an upmarket versus what we've seen over the last couple of years, where transaction volumes have been lower.

Sev Thomassian: Generally at Domain, we're always open to partnering with industry, so in terms of, you know, are there partnership opportunities that we'd be looking to explore over the short, medium, and long term? And the answer is yes, absolutely, that continues. At the same time.

Sev Thomassian: Given we've got a very well-capitalized US parent company now, with its own organic, product roadmap.

Sev Thomassian: One of the parts that we're looking at leveraging in the short term is the products on that roadmap, and they're really exciting. So, Matterport, of course, we've already mentioned that. CoStar also completed the acquisition of Matterport last year. But a lot of the organic products that are being developed, so, for example, some of the AI search experiences that you can see on Homes.com.

Sev Thomassian: you know, at some point, we'll be rolled out in Australia.

Kylie Davis: Awesome. And so, if you… so we've… we've talked about,

Kylie Davis: that… that strata, obviously, is a… is a growth area. We've talked about that, that…

Kylie Davis: that AI search is a growth area, and we've also talked about the fact that the virtual's been around for, you know, there's this sort of a 15-year lag to get adoption for some of these things, but what is the tech that you…

Kylie Davis: Apart from…

Kylie Davis: if you were doing a startup right now, what are the problems that you think really need still to be solved in residential real estate? Now, this is a question that I didn't put in the pre-reading, so this is a question without notice for the panel.

Sev Thomassian: I'm happy to jump on it and take that first, and then others want to pitch in.

Kylie Davis: thinking time. Thanks, Sev.

Sev Thomassian: So, let me start by coming from the value angle, right? Most proptechs, the end result is trying to really drive value for the company, but a lot of that comes through value to the customer.

Sev Thomassian: And so, whatever it is you're looking at building at any time through the technology cycle, what's really important is understanding what do customers want most.

Sev Thomassian: Whether those customers are individual property, property buyers, or whether they're real estate agents or someone else in the broader property ecosystem. So what is it that they value most? What's critical to them?

Sev Thomassian: What is it that they want? So, understanding the jobs to be done, and then thinking through

Sev Thomassian: what the niche would be that you're able to offer relative to the competitive dynamics in the industry and who else is offering, you know, a similar product or service. And I think regardless of whether it's 2026, or 2025, or what the broader market's looking like.

Sev Thomassian: It's incredibly important to meet those parameters, and if you do, you will be highly successful.

Sev Thomassian: Now, having worked with a lot of proptechs over the years, I think one of the paths that becomes really important is some proptechs get it right the first time.

Sev Thomassian: But I'd say that is the minority, not the majority. And so it becomes really important to have a good hypothesis.

Sev Thomassian: Test that product-market fit, and then iterate fast. And if you do that and do that well, you'll be able to come up with a good product or service that is really core to what people in the industry want and are happy to pay for, and I think you'll generate a lot of value.

Kylie Davis: How important, though, like, because some of the things we've talked about today are about that forward vision. If you ask real estate agents what they want, they all want listings.

Kylie Davis: But, you know, we've just gone through a prop… we're in the middle of a property selling journey, and Mark and I went to about 4 or 5 actual auctions and opened for inspections, and not a single agent

Kylie Davis: Only one out of the five agents actually asked for our details as we went into the open home, because they're all expecting their leads to come in digitally now, and some of those old skills are…

Kylie Davis: are lost. So…

Kylie Davis: if you ask an agent what they want, they want listings. If you ask them what they want AI to do, they want them to, you know, manage the quality of those listings, and… but actually, maybe listings

Kylie Davis: aren't necessarily the problem that needs solving. Maybe it's behaviour, which isn't necessarily something that they want to solve. So how do we… how do we drive that behavioural change? I mean, Matt, you'll… you'd be seeing this a lot in…

Kylie Davis: In strata, too, where, like you were talking about before, where you've got strata groups, or Strata Committees.

Kylie Davis: deciding not to take up insurance or to reduce their insurance, and then causing problems for themselves, you know, 10 years down the… or make repairs and cause problems 10 years down the track. What do we need to do to manage the behaviour better or differently?

Matt Larwood: you know, the obvious thing to say is, you know, to leverage the fear of what might go wrong, but that's not working because, it's not working. I think,

Matt Larwood: To, to change the behaviour…

Matt Larwood: I don't really know whether you can. I think what you can do, though, is you can change what you're serving up to people, and how you're serving it up to people, and by, exposing people to,

Matt Larwood: a problem in a different way, is often a good way of erasing it to the surface, so,

Matt Larwood: people building a niche product that solves, that addresses those problems that are there, is one thing, but getting to the… getting into the end consumer is another thing, and there's a bit of… I'm kind of joining a few dots here.

Matt Larwood: in Strata, whilst it's good that there's more people coming in to the industry and providing deep and thorough solutions, there's also a little bit of change fatigue from a file to another thing, it's another platform, it's another…

Matt Larwood: implementation and onboarding I have to do, and another license I have to maintain. So, I think, the way to think about it is to, not only think about the problem that you're solving, but the best way to present that to the market, and if that's through a channel to market.

Matt Larwood: then that's the way to go. I think one of the problems that gets in the way, of entrepreneurs, and maybe is just an inbuilt part of how we think is the ego sort of thing, and you know.

Matt Larwood: I have to have visibility of my product, and I have to, you know, have it on the wall somewhere, and run it as a standalone, and I want to… I want to drive a massive wedge through the market and create this huge…

Matt Larwood: niche for myself, but maybe not… maybe that's not the only way to think about it. You know, maybe it's to look at the players in the market already who might offer a complementary

Matt Larwood: or an aligned, or a next part of the workflow service, and, work together with that, existing, and well-known and repeatable brand. So, yeah, I think…

Matt Larwood: Solving problems is one thing, but getting it to the people and packaging it in a way in which they are happy to receive is another part of the challenge people are going to have to think about.

Kylie Davis: Yeah, framing it.

Josh Callaghan: It reminds me… it reminds me, Matt, of an old adage, which is, first-time founders obsess about products, second-time founders obsess about distribution.

Matt Larwood: Yep.

Josh Callaghan: This is so true, and I think just picking up on the customer thing, though, I think that's probably actually, like, designing something and creating great customer experiences, I think, is the mistake, actually, that most proptechs make.

Josh Callaghan: And the reason that's a big mistake in proptech is because the customers are not the decision makers, they're not the ones that pay, they have basically a free ride through the entire… and all of the incentives and the mechanisms for payment

Josh Callaghan: are actually lined up into gatekeepers, not into the consumer. So it doesn't matter if I create the world's best digital customer experience, or whatever, as a proptech that they want. A great example is virtual tours.

Josh Callaghan: You know, I can rattle off stats all day about the engagement on virtual tours, and how much people want them and use them, and how much it impacts positively by behaviour.

Josh Callaghan: It doesn't matter if they're not paying for it.

Josh Callaghan: And if it actually… if it's actually the vendor that's paying for it, and it's also the agent in between that needs to decide whether they're even asking the vendor to pay for it, and you know, it's all this other stuff that's…

Josh Callaghan: that's mixed up. So, I think it's actually, like, trying you've almost got to… my advice to founders or people starting, you know, proptechs or any techs, is, you've got to find…

Josh Callaghan: the problems with the people who are paying the bills, who are the ones who are actually, like, transacting. They're the ones who, who can sub out, or improve or have some benefit that they…

Josh Callaghan: That they get from, from implementing your new technology, or the solution that you've created. If I was to pick just one, though, I think 2026

Josh Callaghan: you'd be crazy not to be developing a really well-integrated AML solution, I'd say, that streamlines just a smidge of the upstream and downstream

Josh Callaghan: you know, process flow for… for clients. There's a lot of confusion out there. They have to buy it and pay for it. There's, you know, it's a compliance thing. It's a… it's… that's when…

Josh Callaghan: That's where money gets made, is when there's those big flows through the economy and market and shifts in the sand, and people can come in with a really great solution for it.

Kylie Davis: Yeah, and look, we are seeing, you know, there has been a flurry of new AML proptech out there, and a lot of them are integrating into the, into existing proptech, so big shout out to all those AML proptechs out there.

Kylie Davis: I think for my money too, because, like, this, this has sort of taken a bit of a fascinating turn, because if you apply what Sev was saying, and then what you were saying too, Josh and Matt.

Kylie Davis: Why did the portals do well? Because they… initially, because they offered an alternative to the expense of newspaper advertising.

Kylie Davis: Which is what… to your point. But then now, why do they hold that, position? To Sev's point, is that because consumers actually get so much value out of being able to go to one place to find everything?

Kylie Davis: And so, like, so yes, it is… there's kind of,

Kylie Davis: different periods and points in time when there are different dynamics. And that goes back to what you were saying before, Josh, too, is that, are you focused on your product and your P&L and, you know, for every 100 bucks we get 50, or are you actually trying to really

Kylie Davis: radically transform and disrupt the way we've always done things, in which case you're looking for funding to pay for that vision until such time as you can monetize it, right? So everybody's telling the truth, it's just sort of which… which lens are you going to go through.

Kylie Davis: But I think if I had my money down for, proptechs, that I'd be looking to,

Kylie Davis: Be setting up? Is it, like, yeah, anything around compliance, because that's where you've got to… that's where people have got to be spending, but also anything that is, extracting data from… or joining up the dots between the disparate data sets that sit across the entire ecosystem from, you know, planning to… and how we're handing off.

Kylie Davis: But guys, look, I'm really conscious of the time. We're about to hit our 2 o'clock mark. This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much, Josh Callaghan, Matt Larwood, and Sev Thomassian for your time. We're looking forward to a fabulous year at Proptech Australia.

Kylie Davis: So, and if anyone's got any other questions that you want to follow up with, hit us up on, like, LinkedIn or through the website, and we will connect you up with any of the guys on the panel. Just a reminder, we've got a couple of really… we will be shortly announcing at Proptech Australia the, the Proptech Awards. They're coming up for 2026. Looking forward to some great,

Kylie Davis: some great entries coming through that. It's always a great way to learn about new proptechs. We have the Proptech map coming out, and I think I've just learned about 5 new proptechs that I need to make sure the kids, the guys have included for… as part of today.

Kylie Davis: And 12th of March, if you are a woman in proptech, we would love to see you at the Women in Proptech lunch. We are in the process of organising that. Stay tuned.

Kylie Davis: And we also have the forum coming up in November. So, thank you, everyone. Thanks, Matt, Josh, Sev, great conversation. Looking forward to seeing you when we all catch up on February 3 for the, Proptech Board Meeting.

Kylie Davis: Thanks, guys.

Josh Callaghan: Thanks, everyone! 

Kylie Davis: Thanks. Yeah.

Kylie Davis: Bye.