From Badi to Spotahome: Real estate without assets makes its way into sector

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

Badi has raised 40 million euros since its foundation; Housfy generated 250 million euros in sales in 2018; Spotahome imposes with its galactic signings, and Tinsa reinvents itself to incorporate technology into appraisals.

Fotocasa and Idealista were the precursors. They went on the market when the proptech concept did not even exist and changed the way of understanding the sector. Now, technology is an essential value in real estate and start-ups are gaining weight until attracting the attention of funds and large companies in the sector.

Badi started in 2015 in response to the difficulty of young people to access housing. The Founder, Carlos Pierre -primo de Óscar Pierre, founder of Glovo- defined his start up as a system between Airbnb and Tinder, mixed with Wallapop. In short: an application that allows anyone to publish, find and book rooms.

Since its founding, the start up has raised 45 million dollars (40.4 million) from five rounds of financing led by different investment funds. The company aims to "transform the real estate market" and, for this, seeks to reach agreements with large companies in the sector.

This year, Badi and the consultant Savills Aguirre Newman have teamed up to carry out the first study on the profitability of room rental in Spain. In addition, the company of Carlos Pierre has also closed an agreement with a fund to carry out a pilot test with twenty floors, which will be rented through the application for a year.

Housfy is another disruptive company in the sector. The Catalan proptech, founded by Albert Bosch, Miquel A. Mora and Carlos Blanco, sold 1,010 homes in 2018 and ranked in the top 5 of Spanish real estate agencies. In total, the company generated 250 million euros in sales.

Recently, the technology platform has closed a round of financing of six million euros to strengthen its international expansion. "We want to open up to other countries like Portugal or France and expand our presence in Italy," says the company's CEO Albert Bosch.

Spotahome, meanwhile, was born at the end of 2013 as a service to lease a home without having to sign a face-to-face contract. In June of last year, the company captured 40 million dollars (34 million euros) in a round of financing led by the venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins. This operation was the first of this company, based in Silicon Valley, in the Spanish market.

Since then, the company founded by Malaga's Alejandro Artacho has not stopped growing. Spotahome has made a dent in the sector and has drawn the attention of large companies with their galactic signings. Cleo Sham, from Uber, and Angel Azcarraga and Balaji Nageswaran, from Amazon, are some of the recent additions to the company.

The start up has renewed its management team to continue expanding throughout Europe. Tinsa Digital responds to a completely different model. Founded by the appraiser, the proptech that capitalizes on the big data accumulated by the company and combines them with state-of-the-art technology systems.

In July, the valuation company created Radar, a real estate big data tool with information on the market value since 2009. “Radar democratizes access to big data and real estate market indicators to allow any user to have the more precise information available, ”says Jorge Valero, Director of Tinsa Digital.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

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