Propaya

High-Level Overview

Propaya is an AI-powered proptech startup that automates commercial lease abstraction and review, transforming dense, complex lease documents into structured, export-ready data with clause-level citations. Its core product enables real estate professionals to extract key lease terms—rent, escalations, options, exclusives, and more—in minutes rather than days, drastically reducing manual effort and error risk.

The company serves brokers, in-house real estate teams, asset managers, and law firms that manage commercial real estate portfolios. Propaya solves the costly, time-intensive problem of parsing and abstracting leases by hand, which traditionally takes hours per lease and is prone to inconsistencies. By delivering accurate, auditable lease summaries with source references, Propaya accelerates due diligence, portfolio analysis, and deal negotiation. Backed by Y Combinator (Summer 2024 batch) and already reporting 85–90% time and cost savings for customers, Propaya is gaining early momentum in a growing $4.5B+ lease abstraction services market.

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Origin Story

Propaya was founded in 2024 by a small team with deep experience in commercial real estate and software development, emerging from firsthand frustration with the inefficiencies of manual lease review. The founders observed that even seasoned professionals spend dozens of hours per lease extracting and verifying terms, often using inconsistent templates and spreadsheets that introduce risk and slow down transactions.

The idea crystallized around applying modern AI to automate this tedious, high-stakes process—turning lease abstraction from a back-office bottleneck into a fast, reliable, and scalable workflow. After building an early version that demonstrated dramatic time savings, the team applied to and was accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2024 batch, validating both the technical feasibility and market demand. Early traction came from real estate firms and brokers who immediately saw the value in reducing abstraction time from days to minutes while improving accuracy and auditability.

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Core Differentiators

AI-Powered, Clause-Cited Abstraction

• Propaya’s engine doesn’t just extract data—it links every term back to the specific clause in the lease, enabling fast verification and audit trails.
• Handles complex, non-standard lease language and structures better than template-based tools.

Speed and Workflow Integration

• Delivers a detailed lease breakdown in minutes after upload or scan.
• Supports drag-and-drop, bulk uploads, and custom Excel exports, fitting into existing workflows without requiring process overhauls.

Accuracy and Risk Reduction

• Reduces manual errors and inconsistencies that lead to financial leakage or legal exposure.
• Designed with input from CRE professionals, so it captures the nuances that matter in negotiations and compliance.

Targeted for CRE Professionals

• Built specifically for commercial leases (not residential or generic contracts), with deep understanding of market norms, options, exclusives, and CAM provisions.
• Positioned as a tool for brokers, asset managers, and attorneys—not just property managers—enabling faster deal evaluation and portfolio analysis.

Lean, Focused Team with Domain Expertise

• Small, agile team combining AI/software engineering with real-world CRE experience, allowing rapid iteration based on user feedback.

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Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Propaya sits at the intersection of three powerful trends: the digitization of commercial real estate, the rise of AI for document intelligence, and the growing demand for operational efficiency in asset-heavy industries. CRE has long been a laggard in software adoption, but rising complexity in leases, tighter margins, and the need for faster M&A and portfolio decisions are forcing firms to modernize.

Timing is critical: advances in large language models and structured data extraction now make it possible to reliably parse unstructured legal text at scale—something that was impractical just a few years ago. Propaya is riding this wave by focusing narrowly on a high-friction, high-value task (lease abstraction) rather than trying to rebuild the entire CRE stack. This focused approach allows it to outperform broader property management platforms on core lease analysis.

By turning static lease PDFs into dynamic, structured datasets, Propaya also enables downstream use cases: better rent roll accuracy, faster CAM audits, improved portfolio analytics, and stronger negotiation leverage. In doing so, it contributes to a broader shift where CRE firms treat lease data not as a compliance chore, but as a strategic asset.

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Quick Take & Future Outlook

Propaya is well-positioned to become a standard tool for commercial lease review, especially as CRE firms face pressure to do more with less and reduce operational risk. The next phase will likely involve deeper integrations with property management systems (Yardi, MRI, etc.), expansion into multi-tenant and portfolio-level analytics, and possibly moving upmarket into more complex lease types (industrial, retail, mixed-use).

The company’s narrow focus is a strength today, but long-term success will depend on how well it can expand its AI’s understanding of lease variations across geographies and asset classes while maintaining accuracy. If it can build strong distribution through brokers and law firms, and eventually embed into due diligence and asset management workflows, Propaya could evolve from a lease abstraction tool into a core layer of CRE data infrastructure.

For investors and operators in proptech, Propaya exemplifies the power of applying AI to a specific, painful workflow in a traditional industry. It’s not about replacing humans—it’s about giving them superpowers to move faster, negotiate smarter, and manage risk better. In a world where every basis point and every day counts, that’s a compelling proposition.