In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Mark DeMitchell from Nestment.
Who are you, and what do you do?
My name is Mark Demitchell and I’m the founder of Nestment. We are making it easy for friends and family to purchase property together.
What problem does your product/service solve?
With skyrocketing real estate prices, people are looking for alternative ways to purchase property. Co-buying is an attractive alternative but involves a lot of moving pieces, coordination, and communication. It’s difficult to get a group of people on the same page, especially for such a big investment.
What are you most excited about right now?
I’m excited about a recent Instagram ad test we ran to gauge interest in our value prop. We ended up getting a really great response and had people signing up on our waitlist landing page. It’s always encouraging to see demand because you know you are headed in the right direction.
What’s next for you?
Raising an initial round of funding to build our MVP.
What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?
I’m passionate about mental health and increasing access to services, clinicians, and treatment. It’s wild that trying to find a therapist in the bay area is such a daunting task. You think in a place with so much technology and being known as socially progressive it would be easy to find a therapist, but it’s insanely difficult. When you are suffering the last thing you are capable of is spending energy jumping through logistic hoops for weeks. It needs to be simpler.
Thanks to Mark for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.
We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).
For years, residents in Solano County heard about a mysterious group buying up thousands of acres of farmland and making millionaires out of property owners. The agricultural land had been owned by the same families for decades — some of it for more than a century.
But the company, Flannery Associates, did not say what its plans were for the land, dotted with towering wind turbines and sheep grazing on pastureland. It paid several times market value and made offers on properties that were not for sale, according to officials familiar with the land purchases.
Then, last week, a survey was sent to residents asking them what they thought about “a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over ten thousand acres of new parks and open space,” according to a screenshot of the survey shared with the Los Angeles Times.
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That’s when it became clear that Flannery Associates had big plans for the rural landscape.
Over a five-year period, the company became the largest landowner in Solano County after purchasing more than 55,000 acres of undeveloped land. The company has paid more than $800 million since 2018, according to court records.
U.S. Rep. John Garamendi, who represents the region, said for years he and other officials were unable to determine who was behind the dizzying land grab. Flannery Associates has purchased land that was restricted to open space and agricultural purposes under a state conservation program.
The company seeks to rezone the land, which would require approval by multiple state and county agencies and wouldn’t be as simple as asking residents to vote on the issue, officials familiar with the process said. But the lack of residential zoning in the area does not seem to be a factor for Flannery Associates.
Since its buying jag began, the company has filed suit in federal court against a group of families the firm purchased property from, seeking $510 million. Flannery Associates claims the families conspired to inflate their property values in a scheme to get more money.
Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) lambasted the company for how it has handled the purchases and for not working with local residents.
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“Flannery Associates is using secrecy, bully and mobster tactics to force generational farm families to sell,” Garamendi said during an informational committee hearing on Tuesday that addressed the company’s actions.
For years, residents and politicians speculated that Flannery Associates was backed by foreign investors seeking to spy on Travis Air Force Base. Located in Solano County, the base is one of the busiest military facilities in the nation. Most of the land surrounding the base is now owned by Flannery Associates, according to county documents.
Some of the company’s financial backers were revealed in an article last week by the New York Times, and they include a cadre of tech entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
On the eastern end of Solano County, the city of Rio Vista is now surrounded by Flannery Associates land. Mayor Ronald Kott said that, like many Solano County officials, he had not been approached by anyone from the company to discuss plans for the land.
Although he’s now aware of the company’s goals and some of the financial backers, he’s still unsure how his city of 10,000 residents found itself surrounded by land owned by a group of tech billionaires.
“I have more questions than answers,” Kott said. “Our destiny is going to be determined by whatever they’re going to do.”
Flannery Associates has said little since it was formed as a limited liability company in the state of Delaware in 2018. The company’s actions were first reported by ABC7’s San Francisco Bay Area news station, KGO, which said a mysterious company was purchasing large amounts of land.
Flannery Associates is led by Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs investor who found fame and fortune by the time he was 22, according to a 2010 Business Insider article. Sramek previously worked out of Goldman’s offices in London, but his LinkedIn profile now lists Fairfield, Calif., in Solano County as his primary location.
In a self-help book he co-wrote, Sramek says if given the chance to give his younger self a bit of advice, he would quote Ayn Rand: “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
He did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
For years, Garamendi and U.S. Rep Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) tried to pierce through the opaque veil that surrounded Flannery Associates. Then, in the last week, representatives of the company attempted to arrange sit-down meetings with the Congress members and the survey was sent out to residents.
The survey said that the issue of a new city might be on next year’s ballot, which was news to Garamendi and Thompson. There have been no efforts made by any groups to get a new measure on the ballot for this project, according to officials. The survey also said the developers would replace the county’s existing aqueduct — calling it “one of the most polluted in California” — generate tax revenue for schools and be entirely funded by private sector money.
Thompson said the company’s actions had raised food and national security concerns. He’s asked the U.S. Air Force, the Treasury Department, the Defense Department and the FBI to investigate the land purchases. Thompson met with representatives from the company, including Sramek, according to KGO.
“And I don’t think they had a clear understanding of the significance of livestock in Solano County,” Thompson said. “And it was my impression that they kind of pooh-poohed the agricultural value of the land.”
Garamendi plans to meet with representatives from Flannery Associates at a later time, according to his office.
Solano County Supervisor Monica Brown is not familiar with Silicon Valley and spent most of her professional career as a schoolteacher. She heard from friends who received the survey and wondered if the company had the best interests of the county’s current residents in mind.
“We’re growing food and helping people. Why would you stop economic growth like that?” she told the Los Angeles Times. “Why would they spend $800 million and not be transparent about it?”
Flannery Associates has purchased more than 140 parcels of land, according to court records and county assessor data. That number is growing every day, officials say.
But in its lawsuit, the company claims that it overpaid and is seeking to claw back some of its money.
Attorneys for Flannery Associates have referenced personal relationships and text messages among neighbors in court documents — neighbors who could be influenced, they argue, by a scheme to drive up asking prices for the land.
The lawsuit has had a chilling effect on some landowners in the Montezuma Hills and Jebson Prairie area of the county. Multiple residents in the area declined to comment about the company for fear of being named in a lawsuit.
Others who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation by the company say they feel as though Flannery Associates will target anyone who speaks out about the company’s aggressive tactics to buy land.
Garamendi called the lawsuit a “heavy-handed, despicable intimidation tactic.” He said that the company managed to purchase all the land without any of the current governmental safeguards in place to flag the issue. He said that, in the future, information about large land sales, and who is buying and selling, would be vital for lawmakers and residents.
Thompson introduced a bill that was inspired by the Flannery Associates land purchases that would provide more effective tools for state agencies to investigate large land sales.
Through a spokesperson, Flannery Associates said members of the company “care deeply about the future of Solano County and California and believe their best days are ahead.”
The company said the project aims to bring “good-paying jobs, affordable housing, clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, open space, and a healthy environment” to Solano County.
“We are excited to start working with residents and elected officials, as well as with Travis Air Force Base, on making that happen,” spokesperson Brian Brokaw said.
The company says it resorted to secrecy while purchasing the land to avoid rampant real estate speculation. But it has not disclosed specific details about the scope of its project. Representatives for Flannery Associates are meeting with community leaders to present their vision, according to Brokaw.
Michael Moritz, venture capitalist and longtime San Francisco resident, is one of the financial backers behind the company. In a 2017 email viewed by the New York Times, Moritz described an opportunity to invest in a new California city. He explained how investors could transform farmland into a bustling metropolis.
Sequoia Heritage, the $15-billion wealth management firm Moritz founded in 2010, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But in a February New York Times opinion piece, Moritz described some of his frustration with San Francisco and how the city had become “a prize example of how we Democrats have become our own worst enemy.”
He described legislators who deceived voters with tweaks and rule changes to the city’s charter so they could stay in power and drive seismic shifts in the local government.
“The core of the issue, in San Francisco and other cities, is that government is more malleable at the city level than at higher levels of government,” Moritz wrote. “If the U.S. Constitution requires decades and a chisel and hammer to change, San Francisco’s City Charter is like a live Google doc controlled by manipulative copy editors.”
Other financial backers with Flannery Associates include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm investors Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon; payments company Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison; Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs; and entrepreneurs turned investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, a Flannery Associates spokesperson confirmed.
Although those names were not repeated at an agricultural committee hearing on Tuesday, lawmakers were thinking of the financial backers’ actions.
Flannery Associates’ land buys threaten the makeup of eastern Solano County, mainly the land under the California Land Conservation Act, which sets aside properties for agricultural purposes and open space. The penalty for not obeying that policy does not seem to dissuade Flannery Associates, former West Sacramento Mayor Christopher Cabaldon said during the committee hearing.
The act, also known as the Williamson Act, can include a fee for the incompatible structures built on the land. For billionaire property owners, that could just be seen as the price of doing business.
“In some sense,” he said, the conservation program has “been like a flag that says, ‘Buy here.’”
The Flannery Associates project illustrates just how weak current tools are for dealing with a project of this size. Secrecy further hampers state regulators unaware of a buyer’s intent for the land, Cabaldon said.
Brokaw, the Flannery Associates spokesperson, said the company wouldn’t comment on specific issues brought up during the committee hearing but was meeting with county and state leaders to address their concerns.
Officials and landowners worry that much of the infrastructure needed to build a new city is just not present in eastern Solano County. And an influx of development would almost certainly drive out any farmers from the region.
But another scenario that could present itself is Flannery Associates moving ahead with its project only to have it fall apart years later.
“Even if the project is rejected locally … you can’t reset the clock,” Cabaldon said. “You cannot turn it back and say, ‘OK, no harm, no foul. Let’s just return to the way that this community was two years ago.’ Because the owners will be gone, the family farmers will have left.”
Times staff writers Jessica Garrison and Ryan Fonseca contributed to this report.
Texas continues to outpace other states in attracting new residents, according to migration data from John Burns, with Houston, San Antonio and Fort Worth showing strong housing demand. The other top cities for in-migration include Jacksonville, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee.
However, the Austin housing market, which boomed during the pandemic, is now seeing barely positive migration numbers, along with Phoenix, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada.
According to Altos Research, the Austin metro housing market shows signs of a substantial normalization in home prices compared with the overall trends of the pandemic years and pre-pandemic years. The median sale price for a home in the Austin metro area reached a peak of $675,000 in April 2022. By April 2023, that figure had dropped by 14.07% to a median sale price of $580,000. As of August 2023, the median sale price in the Austin metro area had moderated further to $569,900.
The John Burns report shows housing demand is weak in Sacramento and Riverside-San Bernardino, California.
Meanwhile, in metros such as Denver, Seattle and Philadelphia, the concern doesn’t revolve so much about the people coming in but too many going out, as out-migration is becoming a real issue.
At the very bottom of the list, the East Bay area, Orange County, San Diego, San Jose, Miami, Washington, D.C., Boston, Chicago and San Francisco show very negative domestic out-migration. However, this exodus might be offset by international migration.
To conduct this study, John Burns monitored domestic migration trends in near real time, using postal address change forms that are current within a few months. This data excludes international migration.
It’s no secret FHA loans have been extremely popular during the latest housing recovery, thanks to their low down payment and credit score requirements.
Before recent changes, FHA loans tended to be a better option than conventional mortgage loans because of relatively low mortgage insurance premiums and cheaper mortgage rates.
Additionally, when the high-cost conforming loan limit (for Fannie and Freddie loans) dropped to a maximum of $625,500 in late 2011, the FHA became the only game in town for those looking to take out the largest loans possible while avoiding the jumbo realm and the restrictions that come with it.
Though the FHFA dropped the high-cost conforming loan limit over a year ago, HUD kept its high-cost loan limits intact, allowing prospective borrowers to take out loans as large as $729,750 in the priciest regions of the country.
These limits are still available until the end of the year, at which point the new national loan limit “ceiling” will align with the max high-cost conforming limit of $625,500.
In short, this is a blow to those in higher-cost regions of the country looking to put down as little as possible when purchasing a home, especially with the 3% down mortgage going the way of the dodo.
650 Counties Nationwide Will Have Lower FHA Loan Limits Next Year
HUD said about 650 counties will have lower loan limits as a result of this change. Places like Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Washington DC, New York City, and parts of Colorado and Virginia will see loan limits fall from the current ceiling of $729,750 to the new ceiling of $625,500.
The national loan limit “floor” for FHA loans will remain unchanged at $271,050 in 2014, which is set at 65% of the conforming loan limit.
Certain areas of the country will have loan limits in between the floor and ceiling, including parts of California, Florida, and Illinois, along with other major metros nationwide.
This was done by design to usher in private capital and return the FHA to its original mission of serving the underserved, which aren’t the rich and well-to-do.
The FHA is also grappling with massive losses on older loan vintages, which has forced the agency to make several changes to shore up reserves, including imposing higher mortgage insurance premiums and requiring coverage to stay in force much longer.
For these reasons, conventional loans are often a better deal nowadays unless you absolutely cannot put down at least 5% on your mortgage.
In Alaska, Guam, Hawaii, and the Virgin Islands, the ceiling is 150% higher because of more expensive construction costs.
By the way, if you’re an existing FHA borrower, you can utilize the streamline refinance program regardless of loan balance.
And Home Equity Conversion Mortgages (HECM) are subject to a maximum claim amount of $625,500, regardless of whether in the contiguous United States or the special exception areas listed above.
Foreclosed properties accounted for more than half of all Bay Area resales during December, a first, according to real estate information provider DataQuick.
That’s up from 46.8 percent in November and 14 percent a year ago. As a result, home sales increased 19.7 percent from November and 36 percent from December 2007.
A total of 6,889 new and resale homes and condos sold in nine counties last month, well below the December average of 8,807, but above recent lows seen earlier last year.
Relative bargains helped drive sales, with the median price paid falling to $330,000 in December, down 5.7 percent from November and 43.8 percent from $587,500 a year ago.
“It would be wrong to say that Bay Area home values are half of what they were a year-and-a-half ago,” said John Walsh, MDA DataQuick president, in a statement. “We’re figuring that maybe half of the decline in median is a market mix issue, and the rest a drop in value.”
“But we’re in the middle of this, and we won’t be able to quantify it until it’s behind us. What is remarkable, is that so much Bay Area activity is still on hold, waiting the turbulence out. We don’t know how long that can last.”
Interestingly, home loans exceeding the conforming limit fell drastically, accounting for just 21.8 percent of sales, down from a rate of about 60 percent seen in the area during recent years.
On a positive note, the typical monthly mortgage payment buyers committed themselves to fell to $1,471 last month, down from $1,695 in November and $2,848 a year ago.
Unsurprisingly, Countrywide, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo were the top area mortgage lenders during the month.
Bay Area home prices are falling as mortgage rates climb to their highest levels in more than two decades, squeezing many house-hunters out of the market and keeping would-be sellers on the fence.
The median price of existing single-family homes dropped 5.2% to $1.26 million across the region from June to July, according to the California Association of Realtors. The decline followed steady price gains most of the year as sales picked up during the traditionally busier spring and early summer home-buying seasons.
But now, spiking mortgage rates are slamming the brakes on an already challenged local real estate market. On Thursday, Freddie Mac reported the average rate for a typical 30-year fixed mortgage rose to 7.09%, up from 6.96% last week, reaching the highest peak since 2002.
“People are just not jumping into buying a home right now at these interest rates,” South Bay real estate agent Ramesh Rao said.
Meanwhile, a 30-year fixed “jumbo” home loan — which is common for more expensive houses — averaged 7.65% on Thursday, according to Bankrate.com. In the Bay Area, a jumbo loan is a mortgage that exceeds $1,089,200.
Mortgage rates have been on a sharp upward trajectory since last year when the Federal Reserve began raising the cost of borrowing to rein in inflation. Rates have more than doubled their recent sub-3% lows, in turn boosting monthly home payments for new mortgages by thousands of dollars and squashing a record-setting pandemic real estate boom.
In November, rates briefly topped 7% before falling to around 6% in February. They’ve been trending up again since.
Despite slowing inflation, Oscar Wei, an economist with the realtors association, said rates could reach as high as 7.5% in the coming weeks before dropping to around 6.5% by the end of the year.
That will likely put more downward pressure on home prices in the near term. And even if rates decline in the months ahead, fewer people typically look for homes during the second half of the year, meaning prices should continue to soften in line with seasonal trends.
“For buyers who are interested in buying in the fall and winter, there could be some opportunities because it might not be as competitive,” Wei said. “There may be a little more negotiation power for buyers.”
From June to July, median home prices dropped 8.5% in San Francisco to $1.46 million, 3.4% in Alameda County to $1.26 million, 3.2% in Contra Costa County to $900,000, 2.7% in San Mateo County to $1.98 million and 1.4% in Santa Clara County to $1.8 million.
For more than a year now, buyers who’ve been able to stomach the steeper rates have been left with few homes to choose from. That’s partly due to the Bay Area’s chronic housing shortage. But many homeowners who might otherwise be willing to sell have also been unwilling to give up the lower rates they locked in before the recent spike.
Sellers now putting houses up on the market are often doing so reluctantly.
“It’s definitely more so out of necessity, and they’re doing so unhappily because they have a direct comparison point to just a year and a half ago,” said Montana Gabrielle Hooks, an Oakland real estate agent.
Hooks said some of her clients have been forced to sell as their employers put an end to full-time remote work. One is stuck selling a recently purchased, spacious new-build in suburban Fairfield after being required to show up to the office in San Francisco.
“They would have never have purchased it if there was even a decent chance that they had to come back to the office so soon,” she said.
What a difference a city makes…in the uber-hot Bay Area, a staggering 43.5% of homes for sale are priced at $1 million bucks or above, according to real estate listing website Trulia.
Compare that to other major metros like Chicago, Dallas, and Philadelphia, where such listings account for fewer than five percent of listings.
In fact, million-dollar listings account for fewer than five percent of all listings in 68 of the top 100 metros nationwide, which clearly illustrates the lopsided distribution of real estate wealth in this country.
If you want to take it a step further, less than two percent of listings are million-dollar homes in 44 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.
What Does $1 Million Get You in San Francisco?
The saddest part about San Francisco’s real estate situation is that despite the ridiculous valuations, you don’t get very much for your money, unless you really like fog.
That’s right, for $1 million or more, you only get a median sized home of 1,774 square feet. In other words, you’re probably looking at a townhouse or a condo in the city.
And it certainly won’t be large enough to accommodate your family of four, unless you want to live on top of each other.
Surprisingly, New York City wasn’t even in the top five in terms of percentage of million dollar listings. The Big Apple secured the sixth spot with 20.8% of listings in the $1 million plus category.
It was surpassed by Fairfield County, CT (29.7% share), San Jose, CA (25.7% share), Orange County, CA (24.4% share), and Ventura County, CA (21.5% share).
Rounding out the top 10 were Long Island, NY (), Honolulu, HI (), Los Angeles, CA (), and San Diego ().
It Turns Out Water Is Really Expensive
The takeaway from this list is that being close to the water is HUGE. Of the top 10 million-dollar metros, only one isn’t directly located next to a major body of water.
I’m referring to San Jose, CA, which isn’t on the beach, but still isn’t very far from the San Francisco Bay or the Pacific Ocean.
The rest are a stone’s throw from the nearest beach, making them pretty darn attractive to prospective home buyers.
Their proximity to water also creates a major geographical barrier that limits housing supply, a serious buffer for property values.
In areas that are wide open, supply can be relatively limitless, which doesn’t offer house values much protection.
But back to square footage. Being close to the water also means you get a lot less square footage for your buck.
The top 10 million-dollar metros in terms of least square footage are also situated by the ocean, where median size ranges from 1,489 square feet in NYC to 2,750 square feet in Providence, Rhode Island.
The largest million-dollar homes can be found in Birmingham, Alabama, where the median size is an impressive 8,059 square feet. Of course, it’s about 250 miles to the beach.
You can also get a ginormous home in Toledo, Ohio (7,087 square feet) or Indianapolis, Indiana (7,036 square feet), both of which aren’t anywhere close to a local surf spot.
In fact, all of the top 10 largest million-dollar metros in terms of square footage are landlocked.
So there you have it, water is everything.
Read more: Is Google about to replace your real estate agent?
In our latest real estate tech entrepreneur interview, we’re speaking with Jonas Bordo from Dwellsy.
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Jonas Bordo and I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Dwellsy, a free rental listing site where owners and property managers can get high quality leads for free and where renters can find a rental and make it home.
What problem does your product/service solve?
In recent years while I was leading central operations for Essex Property Trust, I saw it get more and more difficult for renters to find rentals as fraud on Craigslist exploded. At the same time, the pay-to-play ILS platforms consolidated and raised prices aggressively, causing their rental inventories to shrink and marketing costs to grow rapidly for multifamily and single-family owners and operators. All the while lead quality floundered.
Before Dwellsy launched, those owners and operators had no easy, free path to publicize their listings and get high-quality leads, and renters had no obvious tool to access a broad range of different rental options. Dwellsy fills that gap as a completely free listing service (free to list, and no charges for leads or leases) that makes it easy for renters to find their next home.
What are you most excited about right now?
Against the backdrop of the COVID 19 pandemic, I’m feeling very fortunate that Dwellsy is in a position to help America’s 110 million renters and more than 10 million owners and property managers.
For property managers, we’re a free tool to drive high-quality leads and lower their cost of marketing – much needed at this time. And for renters, we offer an incredibly broad and growing inventory, great search tools and true organic search – which will make any search for a new rental home or apartment more successful.
What’s next for you?
We had a huge year in 2019 – launched the business, built an amazing core team, went live with our initial product and started finding renters great homes and apartments.
2020 is going to be about broadening and deepening our reach and enhancing our product. We have almost 8 million units and a quarter of the NMHC Top 50 Property Managers listing with us today and we aim to increase that substantially. We have just started to welcome consumers to our platform this year, and we anticipate that growth in consumer traffic – and delivery of free leads to property managers – will continue to grow at a rapid rate this year.
We will also launch our first few paid products — for renters to help them conduct more effective searches and to help small mom & pop landlords list properties more effectively.
Of course, we will continue to offer the same free, high quality leads to owners & managers – that will not change.
What’s a cause you’re passionate about and why?
It’s hard to name just one, but top of mind today is the Housing Industry Foundation, which has done amazing work here in the Bay Area supporting renters in times of crisis over the years. They are all the more necessary now, given how many renters are struggling with affordability today.
Thanks to Jonas for sharing his story. If you’d like to connect, find him on LinkedIn here.
We’re constantly looking for great real estate tech entrepreneurs to feature. If that’s you, please read this post — then drop me a line (drew @ geekestatelabs dot com).
Bungalow, a new residential real estate platform, recently launched, announcing it has secured $64M in funding: a $14M Series A led by Khosla Ventures, Atomic VC, Founders Fund, Cherubic Ventures, and Wing Ventures, alongside a $50M debt facility.
Over the past several decades the price of rent has dramatically decoupled from income while student loan balances have reached record highs, putting new strains on early career professionals. Not only is housing this group’s largest expense, but the rental experience remains outdated. Though many early career professionals aren’t looking to live alone, finding roommates on traditional ad platforms is fraught with financial and personal risks. Plus, the existing housing stock is dominated by studios and one bedrooms built when most early career professionals lived with spouses.
“My co-founder and I felt the pain of renting in a new city. It was hard to find a great home and even harder to build a supportive community away from friends and family,” said Andrew Collins, co-founder and CEO of Bungalow. “We founded Bungalow to give early career professionals the ability to live in a beautiful and affordable home, in the neighborhood they want, and with a great community surrounding them.”
Bungalow utilizes existing housing supply by signing long-term leases with homeowners, and offers beautiful, multi-bedroom homes in some of the most desirable neighborhoods in cities throughout the U.S. Bungalow expertly matches potential roommates, provides furnished common areas, and takes care of utilities including WiFi and monthly cleaning services. The company also hosts monthly events for its residents, creating an instant community for those new to a city or who are looking to expand their social circle. This two-sided platform significantly reduces the friction of the rental process for both residents searching for a home and homeowners looking for a source of income without taking on the responsibilities of a landlord.
“One major challenge of today’s residential real estate market is the lack of desirable and accessible rental options for young people in urban areas, a problem that will become more pervasive in years to come,” said Keith Rabois, managing director at Khosla Ventures. “Bungalow is taking a full-stack approach that uniquely addresses the rapidly evolving needs of both renters and homeowners, while creating economic value by more effectively utilizing housing inventory.”
Bungalow has been quietly operating for the last year and a half after its founding in early 2017. Since beginning operations, the company has quickly scaled to hundreds of properties and over 750 residents across five urban areas including: the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, San Diego, and Seattle. Today, the company is announcing two new markets to its platform: Portland and Washington, D.C. Bungalow is currently on track to be in 12 major U.S. metro markets by the end of 2018 with plans for global expansion in 2019.
“Bungalow is taking on the $650 billion rental market for early career professionals and it may prove to be a bigger total market size than travel and taxis,” said Jack Abraham, founder and managing partner at Atomic. “By leveraging the existing housing stock and connecting demand with compelling long-term leases, Bungalow is poised to continue its growth to the rest of the country and around the globe.”
Mike Wheatley is the senior editor at Realty Biz News. Got a real estate related news article you wish to share, contact Mike at [email protected].
One of the venture capital firms represented in the Geek Estate Mastermind, HousingTech Ventures, has partnered with the San Francisco Bay Area corporate law firm, Montgomery Pacific LLP and employment law firm, Daijogo & Pedersen, LLP to provide a brief presentation on critical issues that startups should be considering as the country and the economy face many unknowns due to COVID-19. Topics covered will include:
How should your Board exercise its fiduciary duties, including its duty of oversight, in the current environment?
In the face of this unprecedented disruption, are contractual obligations modified in any way?
How should you care for employees and stay in compliance with employment laws?
What additional risks does remote working pose?
Webinar will take place on April 9th, at 2 PM EST // 11 AM PST.
Montgomery Pacific’s founding partners Kathy Woeber Gardner and Karen Masterson Dienst and Daijogo & Pedersen’s founding partner Maki Daijogo will apply their decades of experience of working with startups to frame issues and questions that the COVID-19 situation presents to early-stage companies.
Please reply here to register and you will be sent a link.