When executives at Rudin Management Company started looking for an operating system in 2009 to help them manage their building portfolio, the market for property technology was still in its infancy, and they came up empty-handed.

A decade later, “proptech” is a hot buzzword in commercial real estate, as developers and investors seek an edge in buying, selling and managing their properties. The swelling market has attracted venture capitalists, who invested a record $12 billion in proptech start-ups globally in 2017, according to a report from RE:Tech, a tech research marketing agency.

And Rudin, a 94-year-old, family-run company, is now at the forefront of this booming tech sector.

The move into proptech grew out of necessity for Rudin, said Michael Rudin, a senior vice president at the company, which owns and operates 16 office buildings and 18 apartment buildings in New York.

The company wanted an operating system that functioned like that of a smartphone. “We had a lot of technology in our buildings, but no interoperability between the various systems,” Mr. Rudin said. “We wanted those various silos to be able to communicate with each other and share data.”