real estate

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CREXi raises $11 million to bring commercial real estate out of the Dark Ages

Managing, buying and selling commercial real estate is a fairly primitive process. CREXi founder Mike DeGiorgio remembers one experience in 2014 when he was required to fax and mail details about an urgent transaction to the leasing office, a move that made him think he was back in the era of Pogs and MTV’s Real World Season 1.

“There simply was no great industry solution for researching markets, finding comps, transacting, connecting with key stakeholders, purchasing or investing in properties, renting or leasing space, getting a loan, finding partners to purchase properties with, marketing yourself or the properties you own, sell or lease etc.,” he said. “I started thinking about technology solutions for the commercial real estate industry to solve many of these inefficiencies in the CRE space. I could not figure out why it hadn’t been done and set out to build CREXi to help industry stakeholders be more efficient and to make the industry more liquid, transparent and easier to access.”

CREXi — the CRE stands for “commercial real estate” — has been around since 2015, but recently announced an $11 million Series A as well as some interesting user numbers. Key investors include Jackson Square Ventures, Manifest Investment Partners, Lerer Hippeau, Freestyle Capital, TenOneTen Ventures and Founder Collective. The company has managed more than 100,000 “properties brought to market” on its platform and they have 200,000 users per month. They see more than 6,000 properties listed on the site each month.

The service is a suite of tools that streamlines the entire CRE processing.

“We give brokers the ability to find, manage and qualify leads, market their properties with customizable emails, and communicate with interested parties through in-app messaging. Additionally, our features help brokers interact with the industry and its stakeholders; solicit, make, accept, counter and negotiate offers; run competitive bidding processes; run escrow and closing processes; research markets and sold properties etc.,” said DeGiorgio.

While CRE isn’t very sexy, it’s clear that the industry can use all the help it can get. Considering CREXi manages $450 billion in property value, it’s also clear that this is a lucrative market ripe for disruption.

“We are the first platform to take the entire commercial real estate transaction process online with a simple to use and intuitive interface,” said DeGiorgio. “We collaborate with brokers and principals to blend technology with the fundamentals of CRE transactions, addressing the shifting needs of industry professionals to maximize revenue and minimize time spent on administrative tasks.”

Now he just has to get everyone to throw away their postal scales and fax machines and help CRE enter the era of Honey Boo Boo and leave the era of the Olsen Twins.

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SoFi founder Mike Cagney is back with a new startup and $50 million in funding

Mike Cagney, who was ousted last summer from the lending company he founded, is back with a new startup and a whole lot of funding from at least one of his previous investors.

According to a new report in Bloomberg, Cagney, who earlier this year formed a new lending startup called Figure, has raised $50 million to grow the company, which plans to use the blockchain to facilitate loan approvals in minutes instead of days.

According to the company’s site, its lending products will include home equity lines of credit, home improvement loans and home buy-lease back offerings for retirement.

The round was led by DCM Ventures and Ribbit Capital and included participation from Mithril Capital Management, Cagney confirmed to Bloomberg.

Ribbit Capital in Palo Alto, Calif., has been leading investments in the world of fintech and digital currencies since its founding nearly six years ago. Others of its many bets include the online consumer lending company Affirm, and Point, a startup that buys equity in U.S. homes.

Mithril, co-founded by Peter Thiel, prides itself on funding companies that take time to build, with funds that have longer investing timelines than do most traditional venture vehicles.

The cross-border firm DCM Ventures, meanwhile, is perhaps the most interesting participant in this round. The reason: Back in 2012, DCM began investing in Social Finance, or SoFi, the company that Cagney founded previously.

It isn’t uncommon for VCs to invest in founders with whom they’ve worked before, of course. And SoFi has grown by leaps and bounds since its August 2011 launch. Though it initially focused on refinancing student loans, today it provides personal and mortgage loans and wealth management services, and it appears to be pushing further into other bank-like services.

But Cagney was forced out of the company last summer, not long after a sexual harassment lawsuit was filed by a former employee who claimed he’d witnessed female employees being harassed by managers and was fired after he reported it.

Another former employer who’d been stationed at SoFi’s office in Healdsburg, Calif., told The New York Times that her work environment had been akin to a “frat house,” with employees “having sex in their cars and in the parking lot.” That same story, based on conversations with 30 then-current and former employees, also reported that Cagney himself had raised questions with staff because of his own behavior, including bragging about his sexual conquests.

Evidently, DCM and Figure’s other backers were able to brush aside concerns about anything of the sort happening again at Figure. (We’ve reached out to Cagney and Figure’s investors for more information.)

Employees are also flocking for Figure with the belief, ostensibly, that Cagney is well-positioned to create another financial services juggernaut. According to Bloomberg, the company has already quietly assembled a team of 56 people. Among its new hires is the former chief risk officer of LendingHome, Cynthia Chen, and the former chief legal counsel of PeerStreet, Sara Priola.

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Meet the first four startups in the MetaProp Bridge international accelerator

Real estate-focused MetaProp NYC has been adding new programs on top of its core accelerator. The latest: The MetaProp Bridge at Columbia University.

It’s an international accelerator designed specifically for real estate and property tech-related startups from Europe, the Middle East and Africa that are looking to expand into North America. Participants get access to MetaProp mentors, advisory services and up to $250,000 in financing.

The 14-week program begins with eight weeks in London before moving to New York City and concluding with a two-week, five-city roadshow across North America.

“From our first days on the ground in London, it was clear that this is a critical time for PropTech in EMEA,” said MetaProp’s Leila Collins in a statement. “There is an abundance of compelling technology for the real estate industry emerging from the region. We are happy to now have the infrastructure to partner with and support some of the most promising EMEA PropTech startups as they launch in North America.”

MetaProp says that less than 4 percent of applicants were admitted to this inaugural cohort. Here are the four participating startups:

  • Airlite says it’s creating natural paint that also purifies odors, bacteria and other air pollution. (UK, Switzerland and Italy)
  • 720° is a cloud-based analytics service for monitoring indoor air and environmental quality. (Finland)
  • Frontdoor offers business intelligence for real estate agents. (France)
  • YourWelcome is building a technology hub for vacation rental owners — specifically a tablet where they can provide instructions for their guests and earn money by offering tickets and deals. (UK)

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Keyo modernizes housing with rent auto-pay that boosts your credit

 There’s nothing we spend more money on for a worse experience than housing. Keyo wants to fix all of it. The audacious startup envisions a world where a building’s other tenants get $20 to show you an available apartment on your schedule. Where you auto-pay your rent online. Where you get local business perks and can communicate maintenance requests through an app. And where… Read More

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Homesnap raises $14 million for real estate intelligence

 Rockville, Maryland-based Homesnap has come a long way from its days as a consumer-facing app for displaying information about local homes by taking a photo. While its current app still works this way for prospective buyers, these days its core focus is for U.S. real estate agents, and close to 75% of them are said to be using it. The platform is equipped with hard-to-find data that helps them… Read More

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Airbnb beats big property landlord’s lawsuit in California

 A California judge has dismissed Apartment Investment & Management Company’s lawsuit against Airbnb. Last February, Aimco, which owns or manages about 50,000 properties, sued Airbnb, saying that the company is deliberately incentivizing people to breach their leases. Read More

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WeWork will open a new SF HQ in the Salesforce Tower

 WeWork has money to blow, so the $20 billion startup is putting some of it toward a second headquarters — this time in San Francisco instead of New York, Recode reports. The plan is to locate the HQ in the new 61-floor Salesforce Tower, which is slated to open next year. Read More

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RealtyShares raises $28 million for commercial real estate investing

 Commercial real estate can be a lucrative investment, but it can be hard to come up with the money to buy a stake in the first place.
That’s the idea behind RealtyShares, a platform which pools together debt and equity investments for apartments, office buildings and retail centers.
Now the San Francisco-based startup has gained enough traction to find another big investment for itself. Read More

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HouseCanary raises $31 million to value residential real estate

 What if you could accurately predict the resale value of a home before buying it?  A startup called HouseCanary claims that its data can help you with that. Touting a system that can forecast a sale price within 2.5%, co-founder and CEO Jeremy Sicklick told TechCrunch that Eric Schmidt, Kobe Bryant and other well-known names are betting on his startup because they believe it will make… Read More

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