Aalto, a faster alternative to Zillow
Aalto
Recommended by: David Thacker, Greylock
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $13 million
What it does: Aalto allows homeowners to sell directly to buyers by uploading their listings to its site rather than the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Aalto likes to say it allows sellers to list their home in five minutes rather than the five weeks it takes to list on the MLS.
Why it’s on the list: “Aalto’s marketplace is live in the Bay Area and now has hundreds of exclusive homes listed on their website,” Thacker said. “They have an opportunity to disrupt the residential real-estate market by greatly improving the experience of selling and buying a home.”
Entera, an AI platform to help investors buy more homes
Courtesy of MetaProp
Recommended by: Zachary Aarons and Zak Schwarzman, MetaProp
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $39.5 million
What it does: Entera’s platform uses artificial intelligence to help institutional residential real estate investors buy single-family homes to rent out in 26 markets from Florida to Nevada. It also helps investors manage these properties, which are called single-family rentals.
Why it’s on the list: “The investment process for single-family homes is convoluted and difficult to scale for investors,” Aarons and Schwarzman told Insider. “Entera’s rapid growth is hard to miss in the proptech arena. In the past year, it has empowered buyers to transact on $4 billion in residential real estate, registering nearly 12x growth from the previous two years.”
Flex, allows renters to make payments throughout the month
Bain
Recommended by: Merritt Hummer, Bain Capital
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $5.8 million
What it does: Many people would prefer not to pay their rent in one lump sum, but rather make their payments throughout the month. Flex foots the amount owed to the landlord by the first of the month, then allows its users to make multiple payments instead of one to pay it back. It’s a model similar to other buy now, pay later (BNPL) platforms.
Why it’s on the list: “Flex is bringing the BNPL model to the often overlooked — but large — segment of consumer bill pay,” Hummer told Insider.
Humming Homes lets homeowners request maintenance help as if they were renters
Humming Homes
Recommended by: Chester Ng, Atomic
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $8.1 million
What it does: Humming Homes brings the expertise and on-call nature of residential property management to homeownership, providing a single point of contact to arrange for home-maintenance tasks from cleaning out the gutters to sweeping the chimney.
Why it’s on the list: “Humming Homes has been a savior for me and my wife since we bought a home in Miami a year ago,” Ng said. “Humming Homes provides home-management software and services, making everything about owning a home easy — from sourcing vendors to managing projects to billing. All from an app, paired with virtual and IRL experts and coordinators. It has saved the Ng family so much time, money, and brain damage, so I’m a believer.”
Inspectify, a streamlined, digitized way to get a home inspection
Inspectify
Recommended by: Christopher Yip, a partner at RET Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $11.5 million
What it does: Inspections can be the make-or-break moment in any homebuying deal. Inspectify has streamlined every step of the process from booking a local inspector to delivering digitized reports quickly.
Why it’s on the list: With more than 1,000 inspectors on the platform, Inspectify has become a one-stop shop for what can be an excruciating process for every party. “There’s really nobody else doing what Inspecitfy does,” Yip said.
Keyway, an easier way to invest in commercial real estate
Keyway
Recommended by: Lionel Foster, Camber Creek; Nima Wedlake, Thomvest Ventures
Relationship: Investors
Total funding: $110 million
What it does: A platform for institutional investors to find high-quality investment opportunities in hard-to-access niches, such as small-scale medical-office buildings, while also connecting small- and medium-sized businesses to flexible financing options.
Why it’s on the list: “For investors, Keyway provides scalable access to commercial real-estate assets worth less than $20 million and a comprehensive view of the investment opportunity’s current market value,” Wedlake told Insider.
He added that Keyway lets investors generate letters that express their interest in the investment “with the click of a button.”
Kindred, a home-swapping network
Kleiner Perkins
Recommended by: Annie Case, Kleiner Perkins
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $7.75 million
What it does: Kindred offers a network for home-swapping between members, who only pay a $300 annual fee and a $30 service fee per booking plus cleaning costs.
Why it’s on the list: “They offer a high-trust, low-cost alternative to Airbnb for short-term travel,” Case said. “They just launched but seem to be off to an exciting start.”
Lula, management software for single-family rental owners
RET Ventures
Recommended by: Christopher Yip, RET Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $4.2 million
What it does: Lula is a one-stop shop for property maintenance for people or companies that own many single-family rentals (SFRs). It allows tenants to submit requests, connects building managers with local service providers, handles scheduling and supports real-time updates and photos.
Why it’s on the list: “Lula is perfectly positioned to capitalize on two major trends,” Yip said. “One, the nationwide labor shortage; and two, the growth of SFR portfolios.” Managing multiple single-family properties requires a network of contractors and complex scheduling, Yip added, which Lula can manage digitally. The Kansas City company has already expanded into 10 markets including Atlanta, Denver, and Houston.
Matera, cheaper management for condo owners
Matera
Recommended by: Morad Elhafed, Battery Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $55.9 million
What it does: Makes software for condo owners that is designed to replace their more old-school property-management company, reducing costs for landlords and automating parts of management.
Why it’s on the list: “Matera helps condo owners take back control over their buildings from traditional property managers by giving them the tools to manage the property themselves — thus increasing the profitability of their rental,” Elhafed said.
Prevu, an alternative to Zillow that gives homebuyers cash back
Prevu
Recommended by: Daniel Fetner, Alpaca
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $2.2 million
What it does: Prevu’s platform is similar to other real-estate marketplaces like Zillow in that it allows homebuyers to browse listings, schedule tours, and connect with local agents. But Prevu also gives buyers a way to earn a commission rebate of up to 2% when they purchase their home on the company’s platform rather than through a traditional brokerage.
Why it’s on the list: “At a time when buying a home is becoming easier and easier, the Prevu team has come up with a solution to help make that process even better for consumers, all while helping them save on brokerage commissions along the way,” Fetner told Insider.
Properly, a one-stop-shop for Canadian homebuyers
Properly
Recommended by: Merritt Hummer, Bain Capital Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $154.3 million
What it does: Properly guides Canadian house hunters through the entire journey of buying a home, from combing listings to getting a mortgage to closing the sale.
Why it’s on the list: “Properly combines the best of the innovators in the US market: a top-of-funnel discovery portal for home buyers similar to Zillow, a tech-enabled brokerage a la Compass, and a seamless mortgage experience similar to Rocket Mortgage,” Hummer told Insider.
RentSpree, a software that helps landlords vet tenants
645 Ventures
Recommended by: Nnamdi Okike, 645 Ventures
Relationship: Investor
Total funding: $27.7 million
What it does: RentSpree is property-management software for landlords that connects them with both real-estate agents and prospective renters. It aims to automate the process of finding tenants while easing some of the headaches, like how difficult it is to vet prospective renters.
Why it’s on the list: “RentSpree is targeting a massive market, and their product is reimagining an everyday aspect of people’s lives,” Okike said. “RentSpree is making the process of renting easy for both the landlord and the tenant. They are creating a universal tool for this market that landlords can rely on to make the upfront process of screening, verifying, and upfront payments simple and easy.”
Terrawatt, buys land to build electric car-charging stations
Alpaca
Recommended by: Daniel Fetner, Alpaca
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $1.10 billion, according to Pitchbook’s estimate
What it does: Terawatt buys land to build electric-vehicle charging stations in places like Nevada, California, and Florida. It is building an EV-charging infrastructure network.
Why it’s on the list: “What’s most interesting is how they’ve positioned themselves as not only operators of electric-vehicle-charging infrastructure, but as intermediaries between stakeholders from capital markets and utilities to organizations of all types looking to electrify their fleets,” Fetner said.
Veev builds prefab smart homes
Thomvest Ventures
Recommended by: Nima Wedlake, Thomvest Ventures
Relationship: No financial interest
Total funding: $597 million
What it does: Veev uses modular-construction techniques to build prefabricated homes while simultaneously reducing waste in the construction process.
Why it’s on the list: “Veev bills itself as a solution to the US housing shortage,” Wedlake said. “It says with streamlined design and modular prefabrications, it can build homes four times faster than the industry standard.”
