As Expo Real 2017 opened on Wednesday, BrickVest, the online real estate investment platform, announced the final close of its second fundraising round with £7 mln (€7.9 mln).

BrickVest said this represented one of the largest investments of its kind in the proptech sector. The lead investor was Berlin Hyp, the real estate finance provider to Germany’s largest banking group. The property lender acquired a minority stake in BrickVest, and the two firms have formed strategic partnership.

Berlin Hyp’s partnership with BrickVest provides it with access to an online, AIFM regulated real estate investment platform and an investor base that has grown to more than 3,500 HNWs and family office assets worth around €11 bin. Berlin Hyp said that it would be able to advise its clients on a greater number of European real estate deals and to boost its offering across the equity, mezzanine and senior debt space.

BrickVest’s latest round of fundraising was significantly oversubscribed, following the company’s £2 mln first close in March 2017. Berlin Hyp may seek to extend their stake in BrickVest at a later date.

Sascha Klaus, chairman of Berlin Hyp: 'For us as a bank, this partnership is a way to further implement our digitisation strategy, expand our value chain and tap into further growth potential. Our decision was preceded by a thorough review of BrickVest's business model. The technology, products and the skills and experience of the management team convinced us to agree the partnership.'

Architrave 
Separately, Union Investment Asset Management revealed it has taken a 13% stake in Architrave, a Berlin-based provider of real estate data management solutions.

Union Investment Real Estate has been a business partner of Architrave since September 2017 and has populated the Architrave platform with data from more than 400 properties it owns around the world. The minority stake does not grant Union Investment access to asset management data, which remains under the sole stewardship of Architrave.

The minority investment is linked to a research agreement concerning the joint development of one of Architrave’s cornerstone product components, Artificial Intelligence (AI). Both partners agreed that the long-term objective was to establish an industry standard for gathering real estate data in an open, digital platform.

'The investment in Architrave is our first advance into the Proptech sector,' said Jens Wilhelm, managing director in charge of real estate, portfolio management and IT infrastructure at Union Investment. 'The strategic partnership is a core element of our strategy of driving forward the process of digitisation in the real estate industry. With its established customer base and continuous expansion, Architrave is an ideal partner to realise our common vision of an industry-wide asset management data platform.' In May 2017, Architrave took second place at the inaugural international Proptech Innovation Award involving 200 firms.

The news from Expo Real comes a day after Skepp, an online office search engine, secured €2 mln to expand its ‘officeplanner’ concept in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Skepp's vision is to create an 'optimal connection' by linking online data with offline experiences.