Real estate technology competes against other industries for venture capital and investment dollars. Now a new partnership has developed with the intention to focus on real estate tech startups. Fifth Wall Ventures has raised $212 million in funding to invest in startup technologies that transform how people interact with their physical environment and real estate.

Fifth Wall Ventures wants to improve technology adoption across the real estate industry, which is notoriously behind with technological innovation when compared to other major industries.  Most United States industries direct around 3.5% of their revenue towards information technology. In comparison, the real estate industry spends around 0.5 percent. For the largest industry based on GDP in the United States, Fifth Wall founders and its limited partners feel that's shockingly poor.

Fifth Wall Ventures’ limited partners include some of the largest players in the real estate world.  Combined, these companies represent $640 billion in owned real estate and over 7 billion square feet owned and managed. They include brokerage and real estate services company CBRE, multifamily owner Equity Residential, office buildings developer Hines, hospitality REIT Host Hotels & Resorts, home builder Lennar, mall owner Macerich, and logistics provider Prologis. Additional partners include Lowe's Home Improvement and Rudin Management.

“Fifth Wall believes the most profound change can derive not only from a reimagination of our digital lives, but also from our physical world. We’re excited about the road ahead because the traditional way we interact with space has always been limited by the technology that we can apply to it,” said co-founders Brendan Wallace & Brad Greiwe in a press statement.

With the backing of the industry-leading limited partners, the selected real estate startups have the potential to become the industry standard. Already some of the multi-stage investments in companies like Open Door, VTS, and b8ta resulted in $60 million of successful financing towards real estate technology.

According to recent research into financial investments, the real estate industry earned $5.97 billion in financing from venture capitalists and other sources during 2016. The majority of this funding went to seed/angel funds or Series A financing.