Zachary Aarons (left) and Aaron Block.
Zachary Aarons and Aaron Block
Co-founder and general partner; co-founder and managing partner at MetaProp
Exactly a decade after founding MetaProp, Zachary Aarons and Aaron Block are reaping the rewards of an innovative proptech business that aims to transform the $30 trillion commercial real estate field.
Their dual-strategy venture capital fund — which holds $300 million to its name — seeds both early-stage proptech investing and later-stage venture growth, primarily by sourcing capital and deploying it into financial services, fintech, insuretech, AI, robotics and clean energy across CRE.
“The only thing we do is invest into technology businesses that touch real estate construction, engineering and the built-environment space, and we have been doing it for 10 years,” said Block.
The firm is wrapping up its fourth fund as 2025 comes to a close, in which one of its primary institutional equity partners is the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and has so far made 15 new investments out of this fund. Previous funds raised by MetaProp generated $5 million, $40 million and then $100 million of capital for the firm to play with.
Aarons told Commercial Observer that MetaProp has a self-imposed mandate to diversify its technology investments across assets classes. In 2025 it focused on single-family real estate technology via investments into Jubilee Homes, which turns traditional residential purchases into ground leases, as well as companies like 100, which develops fraud-prevention software for multifamily rental applications.
Moreover, the firm completed its MetaProp Accelerator Program at Columbia University, seeded a company that sells resilience technology to public utilities, and incubated an AI business that uses computer vision on construction documents. Plus, it made its first real estate cryptocurrency investment into a firm that aims to digitize and put U.S. property records onto the blockchain.
“Zach and I didn’t come to this place of being venture capitalists in the built environment only wanting to make money,” explained Block. “We came from a deep background of real estate, tech and angel investing … as entrepreneurs and as real estate practitioners ourselves. We started the firm with core values of leaving it better than we found it.”
