The National Association of Realtors (NAR) announced on Wednesday the addition of a home repair estimate app to its package of NAR Realtor Benefits for members.
Curbio, a provider of pre-sale home improvement services that requires payment at closing, will provide its “Build Your Own Estimate” mobile app to NAR members, which offers free repair estimates for home inspections upon the upload of a PDF document. Members will also “receive a free digital floor plan with every Curbio project,” according to the announcement.
“This collaboration reflects our dedication to equipping NAR members with innovative solutions that cater to the evolving needs of their clients, ensuring a smooth experience for sellers and buyers alike,” said Rhonny Barragan, NAR vice president of strategic alliances in an announcement of the deal.
Second Century Ventures, NAR’s strategic investment division, included Curbio in its “REACH” startup growth program in 2019. Later that year, Curbio won the “pitch battle” segment at NAR’s second annual Innovation, Opportunity & Investment (iOi) summit that took place in Seattle.
“Today’s sellers want to work with real estate agents who offer added value, including the ability to get their home market-ready and spruced up without having to pay upfront,” said Olivia Mariani, CMO at Curbio. “We are thrilled to provide NAR members and their clients with access to our reliable pre-listing home improvements with pay-at-closing terms.”
Founded in 2017, Curbio is based in Potomac, Md. The company also lists Comcast Ventures, Revolution and Camber Creek as investors.
NAR members can navigate to a dedicated page on Curbio’s website to claim their new benefits, and the mobile app is available on both Apple‘s iOS and Google‘s Android operating systems. The company operates within a 40-mile radius of more than 60 major U.S. markets, according to the page.
The New York-based Bowery Valuation has just announced Series A funding in the amount of $12 million to further its technology-powered real estate appraisal platform. According to the announcement, Bowery raised the capital from Builders VC, Camber Creek, Corigin Ventures, Fika Ventures, and Navitas Capital.
Bowery Valuation makes technology that appraisers can use to streamline and make more effective their efforts. A mobile app, for instance, enables users to check off items without having to write down details. As ordinary as this function may sound, it’s surprising nobody else thought of creating tech before Bowery. This app even pulls data from the cloud so appraisers don’t have to surf to find it.
There’s also natural language capability that helps users generate reports. The company narrative says the technology-driven innovations “modernize the appraisal process,” and considering pencils and paper are still the “go to” tools of appraisers… Well, the best innovations are the simplest ones, and Bowery’s team seems to have reinvented the appraisal wheel. Jim Kim, General Partner of Builders VC, and lead investor offered this statement via BusinessWire:
“Bowery brings a whole new way of thinking around appraisals and efficiency when it comes to using technology in the antiquated world of real estate valuation. Builders VC is thrilled to be investing in this team and company, applying a modern mindset and technology to an outdated industry.”
Moving forward, Bowery Valuation is now rolling out a white-label version of the aforementioned app for customers and is expanding outside the company’s original licensing areas in the Eastern U.S. Bowery Valuation has moved out of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Conneticut, into L.A. and Chicago, with other markets in coming into range. Co-founder Noah Isaacs, told reporters his company wants to be in either Los Angeles or Chicago in the next few months. Isaacs told reporters Bowery has tripled its customer base since March of 2018. Bowery Valuation is currently focused on multi-family and mixed-use assets, but the company has plans to expand to other commercial properties in 2019, according to Isaacs.
Isaacs and his childhood pal John Meadows, founded Bowery back in 2015 after the duo worked together at the same appraisal firm in New York. Bowery is based on the vast experience the two gleaned from working in the business, and improvements the founders knew would make a difference for appraisers. Joining the co-founders, Princeton economics wiz, Cesar Devers came aboard as CTO before the three got accepted to the startup accelerator MetaProp NYC.
In the past year alone, Bowery has raised a total of $17 million, tripled its client base, revenue, and headcount, and valued more than $3 billion in commercial real estate. Bowery is now working extensively with top-tier lenders and operating in New York, New Jersey,
Phil Butler is a former engineer, contractor, and telecommunications professional who is editor of several influential online media outlets including part owner of Pamil Visions with wife Mihaela. Phil began his digital ramblings via several of the world’s most noted tech blogs, at the advent of blogging as a form of journalistic license. Phil is currently top interviewer, and journalist at Realty Biz News.
According to Jeff Berman, General Partner at the venture capital firm, Camber Creek, one in three recent home buyers made an offer before even seeing a home in person. This revolutionary trend brought about by the adoption of cutting edge PropTech, is one of the subjects Realty Biz News discussed with Berman last week.
RealtyBiz: Why do you think property technologies have lagged behind the trend to adopt technology-based solutions set by other industries?
Jeff Berman: The most common reason given is that real estate is a “dinosaur” industry. And while that may be true to a certain extent – after all, many of the processes involved in property purchase/sale/lease haven’t changed in hundreds of years – that’s only half of the story. The other half requires us to examine the root of innovation…which is typically borne of necessity (as the old proverb goes, “necessity is the mother of invention”). And the fact of the matter is that players in the real estate industry have been making (a lot of) money going about their business(es) in a decidedly 1.0 manner. But I think that time is ending. Over the last few years we have noticed a sharp uptick in interest in technology from real estate industry insiders. They’ve woken up to the fact that technology is no longer a “nice to have” but a “need to have”.
RealtyBiz:We are seeing hundreds of millions in funding for proptech of every description. What do you see as “game-changing” technology in the space?
Jeff Berman: One of the fundamental ways technology is changing the real estate industry is in workflow/process. Let’s take a typical real estate (buy/sell) transaction. Even with the best stock trading apps at our disposal, you still have to follow a fairly cumbersome process to execute a transaction. There’s discovery (i.e. finding the property you want to buy or listing the property you want to sell), diligence, appraisal, title, legal, financing and settlement. And you have to pay a different set of professionals for each step along the way. The analog I like to use is the stock market 30 years ago. Back then, if you wanted to trade stock you would call a broker who would call a market maker who would call the trading floor to get the trade executed.
Now you can buy stock with a few swipes on your phone. So it will be with real estate. And while we’re still in early innings of this transformation, there are a number of companies developing software tools that are bringing that reality that much closer. For example, Camber Creek portfolio company Bowery built the world’s first end to end technology enabled appraisal firm cutting down the time to generate an appraisal – which is needed in most real estate transactions and is therefore a potential bottleneck – by up to 75% and often at less cost. It is companies like Bowery which will bring ‘game-changing’ technology to the fore.
Realty Biz: You and other experts have predicted that virtual reality (VR) will be an $80 billion dollar market by 2024. What kinds of tools do you see leading this dynamic market?
Jeff Berman: The promise of augmented reality and virtual reality in real estate is borne of the number of potential applications for the technology. From improved digital home/office tours to virtual collaboration – the possibilities are endless. In time, these technologies will reshape how we interact with our homes, our experience of walking down a city street, and how we conceive of offices altogether.
Realty Biz: – How do you pick a winner in a race to fill this property tech void?
Jeff Berman: Our (i.e. Camber Creek’s) ability to identify and scale market leaders is built on our unmatched network of decision-makers and principals in all real estate asset classes. This network provides the firm with a platform to rapidly test potential companies during diligence to determine actionable facts and propriety insights. We can literally “try before we buy” allowing us to find winning companies prior to making an investment. Once an investment is made, our hands-on approach provides portfolio companies access to the network and significant new revenue opportunities. This allows us to de-risk investments, accelerate the growth of portfolio companies, and create exceptional returns for investors.
Takeaway
Berman and other industry experts predict that by 2021, the market for virtual reality and augmented reality technologies will reach $108 billion. Virtual reality tech will become an $80 billion market by 2025, an of this, more than $2.5 billion will come from real estate. The Camber Creek executive’s suggestion that PropTech is a necessity rather than a nicety now, this is the takeaway every forward-thinking real estate professional should glean. For this analyst, I try and imagine a modern movie studio still trying to market silent films. This is the nature of the paradigm AI, AR, and machine learning are causing today. An investment in these technologies is an investment of necessity, in the infrastructure that is the real estate business.
Phil Butler is a former engineer, contractor, and telecommunications professional who is editor of several influential online media outlets including part owner of Pamil Visions with wife Mihaela. Phil began his digital ramblings via several of the world’s most noted tech blogs, at the advent of blogging as a form of journalistic license. Phil is currently top interviewer, and journalist at Realty Biz News.
Last week, construction finance platform Rabbet announced raising a Series A funding round of $8 million led by Goldman Sachs, QED Investors, and Camber Creek. The Fintech company which was formerly known as Contract Simply – helps companies involved in construction finance to digitize and view documents relevant to a deal.
“Rabbet brings efficiency, accuracy and visibility to the complex construction finance industry.”
Rabbet’s groundbreaking software solves a huge point of pain for construction loan processing by helping to expedite construction draw processing, which saves time and money while minimizing human error in data processing. Currently, these processes are manual and paper-based, making it time-consuming and prone to errors.
This funding round comes as the construction markets are in a big slowdown, a trend which has caused a shift from new developments toward the operations and technology end of the business. Given this “throttling back” environment, many in the business of construction finance are searching for new ways to streamlining and making more efficient all their processes.
Rabbet provides just such a streamlining solution, at a time when Fintech investing is empowering entreprenuers to blaze new trails with AI, machine learning, and VR. RealtyBizNews asked Jake Fingert, General Partner at Camber Creek about the VC firms investment in Rabbet. Here’s what Fingert had to say:
“Given the recent deceleration of the construction market, many in the industry are shifting more of their focus from new development to operations and technology. Rabbet is the leading construction loan software solution, an area ripe for innovation and where many in the space, such as Goldman Sachs, are looking for more efficient ways of doing business. Rabbet’s technology significantly reduces the time it takes to process a loan, which means faster payments for subcontractors and more interest for banks, all while digitizing the workflow to improve compliance and record keeping. Instead of ten days, banks are pushing out draws in as little as two days.”
Rabbet’s platform helps banks, developers, and contractors to perform streamlining functions which are currently manual paper-based functions. The Austin based startup makes use of machine learning to located and extract key information from documents so that data and information can be migrated to PDF or spreadsheet form. At the end of the day, Rabbet technology creates a cross-sharing capability that is not currently available. Will Mitchell, Rabbet’s , CEO and co-founder, told interviewers last week:
“All this information is trapped in disconnected PDFs, spreadsheets, emails. We want to focus on the efficiency, accuracy and transparency that software can bring to this complex industry.”
Goldman Sachs’ construction finance division uses Rabbet’s software for streamlining and modernizing their construction investing operations, according to this Reuters release.
Babbet announced the company will use the new funding to continue to invest in the development of its automation platform, to expand service offerings, and to cultivate partnerships. The company also announced an expansion of its software engineering and sales teams in Austin.
Founded back in 2017, Babbet (Contract Simply) was accelerated with Y Combinator. Since that time the company has seen rapid growth, having improved efficiency for projects sized up to $150 million nationwide.
Phil Butler is a former engineer, contractor, and telecommunications professional who is editor of several influential online media outlets including part owner of Pamil Visions with wife Mihaela. Phil began his digital ramblings via several of the world’s most noted tech blogs, at the advent of blogging as a form of journalistic license. Phil is currently top interviewer, and journalist at Realty Biz News.