This UK PropTech Startup Just Hit a $250M Valuation—Here's How They Did It

Jan de Vries · 2026-07-24

Street Group, a Manchester-based company that builds software for the UK residential property market, just landed a major investment from Hg, a big name in European and transatlantic software investing. The deal values the company at over $250 million (around 200 million pounds). That's a huge leap for a business that started in 2015 with a simple idea: make estate agents' lives easier. ### What Exactly Does Street Group Do? Think of Street Group as the operating system for estate and letting agents. They offer a core CRM called Street.co.uk, a lead-generation platform called Spectre, and a growing suite of AI-native products. One of their standout tools is Cortex, which lets customers build and manage their own AI agents. It's like giving agents a digital assistant that never sleeps. The company serves thousands of estate and letting agency branches across the UK. With over 200 employees, they're not small, but they're still growing fast. The co-founders, siblings Tom and Heather Staff, remain majority shareholders and will keep leading the business. ### Why Hg Invested Big Hg is no small player. They manage over $110 billion in assets and have a portfolio of around 60 companies worth more than $190 billion in total. Their portfolio companies employ over 140,000 people and grow revenue at more than 16% annually. So when Hg backs a company, it's a strong signal. Louis Kinsella, a partner at Hg, explained why Street Group caught their eye. "It's a category leader with a technical edge, loved by its customers, and deeply embedded in their daily workflows," he said. He also praised the founding team for combining "genuine product innovation with accelerating growth." ### What This Means for the Future With this funding, Street Group plans to accelerate product innovation and deepen its AI capabilities. The company was previously backed by PXN Group, a Manchester-based VC known for backing high-growth Northern businesses. Now with Hg's resources and network, Street Group can scale even faster. Here's what's likely coming next: - More AI-powered tools for estate agents - Expansion into new markets or services - Deeper integration with existing customer workflows The UK property market is huge, and Street Group is positioning itself as the go-to tech partner for agents who want to move away from legacy systems. ### A Quick Look at the Numbers - Valuation: Over $250 million - Employees: Over 200 - Annual revenue growth: Over 16% (based on Hg's portfolio average) - Founded: 2015 This deal shows that vertical software companies can still command big valuations, especially when they combine strong product-market fit with AI capabilities. For US readers, it's worth watching how this plays out, because similar trends are happening in American real estate tech too. ### The Bottom Line Street Group's story is a classic startup success: identify a pain point, build a solution, and keep innovating. With Hg's backing, they're well-positioned to become a dominant player in UK property tech. And for anyone tracking the intersection of AI and real estate, this is a company to keep an eye on. *This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.*