Street Group Hits £200m Valuation as Hg Bets on AI-Native Agency Software

A Manchester Exit That Rewrites the PropTech Pecking Order

Street Group, a leading provider of vertical software and AI to the UK residential property sector, announced a strategic growth investment from Hg, the leading investor in European and transatlantic software and services businesses, valuing the company at more than £200m. HgCapital Trust will invest approximately £7 million in Street, with other institutional clients of Hg investing alongside through the Hg Mercury Fund. The announcement came on 22 July, just two days ago at time of writing.

The deal provides a realisation event for shareholders, and one adviser described it as "a fantastic exit" for local investors PXN, formerly Praetura Ventures. Bootstrapped ambition from a Manchester side street to a nine-figure institutional valuation in eleven years. Not bad.

What Street Group Actually Sells

Founded and led by siblings and co-CEOs Tom and Heather Staff, and headquartered in Manchester, Street has built an integrated operating system for estate and letting agents. This spans its core CRM (Street.co.uk), its prospecting and lead-generation platform, Spectre, and a growing suite of AI-native products including Cortex, which allows customers to build and orchestrate their own AI agents.

Cortex is the product doing the heavy lifting in the valuation story. Street launched Cortex to automate a range of estate agency workflows by enabling users to build and deploy AI agents within their existing systems. The platform sits on top of Street's CRM and marketing tools and allows agencies to configure AI agents that carry out tasks across enquiry handling, client communication, marketing activity, sales progression and property management.

The distinction matters. Unlike traditional add-on tools, Cortex is positioned as an integrated system that executes tasks within an agency's core software environment, rather than simply supporting users with recommendations or prompts. That architecture, live data in and autonomous action out, is what Hg is paying for.

Cortex was developed over six months and sits above Street's existing CRM and marketing system. It is designed to help estate agents, letting agents, and property managers build and run AI agents that handle tasks across agency workflows, including enquiries, client communications, marketing, sales progression and property management. The aim is to free agents to focus on negotiation, relationship management, vendor care and deal completion. By May, Cortex had over 300 agencies beginning onboarding.

Why Hg Is Writing the Cheque

The capital will support Street's ambition to become the category-defining software and AI platform for the UK residential property sector, with the founding team retaining leadership and majority control. Tom and Heather Staff said: "We built Street to fundamentally change how estate and letting agents work, and AI is central to that mission."

Hg's own language is telling. Louis Kinsella, Partner at Hg, said: "Street is exactly the kind of business we love to back. It's a category leader with a technical edge, loved by its customers, and is deeply embedded in their daily workflows. Heather and Tom are an exceptional founding team who have built something rare, combining genuine product innovation with accelerating growth, as the industry moves towards them and away from legacy solutions."

"Deeply embedded in daily workflows" is PE shorthand for sticky recurring revenue and high switching costs. At £200m-plus, Hg is pricing in not just current ARR but a winner-takes-most scenario across a fragmented UK agency market.

The Market Reality Behind the Multiple

The Street deal lands against a sector that is, by some measures, surprisingly unbrandable. According to AI Business Dispatch analysis of Companies House and IPO data (as of July 2026), 3,015 new SIC 68.20 (residential letting and management) companies were incorporated in Q3 2026, down 79.8% versus the prior period. Over the same period, Class 36 UK trademark filings, the intellectual property class covering real estate and financial services, totalled just 615 in Q3 2026, a 74.2% decline. Most striking: 99.8% of active SIC 68.20 companies hold no Class 36 trademark whatsoever. The overwhelming majority of the UK's letting businesses operate with no formal brand protection. That creates a structural vacuum, and a direct commercial opportunity for a platform like Street that can commoditise the technology layer while independents remain fragmented and unbranded.

In a July 2026 survey of more than 340 self-managing landlords, 92% still ran their lettings on spreadsheets or paper rather than dedicated software. The addressable base is not shrinking; it is simply unconverted.

Broader Sector Pressure Helping Street's Case

AI leasing assistants represent the fastest-growing category in UK PropTech, with adoption among letting agents increasing from 8% in 2024 to an estimated 23% by February 2026. The acceleration is driven by three forces: the Renters' Rights Act 2025 increasing compliance complexity, chronic staffing shortages in the lettings sector, and tenant expectations for instant digital communication.

The Alto 2026 Agency Trends Report highlights a widening gap between larger firms and independents. Nearly nine in ten larger agencies are planning to adopt AI in 2026, while smaller firms risk falling behind unless take-up accelerates. Street's land-and-expand model, CRM first, Spectre prospecting second, Cortex AI agents third, is well placed to capture those mid-market independents before a rival does.

The unanswered question is whether Street's revenue base can grow fast enough to justify the valuation at exit. Hg's Mercury Fund targets the mid-market, not unicorns. At £200m, the bar is ambitious but not reckless. The next twelve months will show whether Cortex sign-ups convert into retained, billing agencies, or whether the platform falls into the classic PropTech trap: impressive demos, modest retention.