Chilean PropTech Houm to Expand Across Mexico

The Chilean headquartered PropTech platform Houm has announced that it will expand its Mexican operations from its Mexico City base to more regional cities.

Founded in 2018, Houm runs on a similar business model to the Brazilian unicorn QuintoAndar. The company acts as both a marketplace for home hunters as well as an FSBO and rentals platform which cuts out agents and facilitates transactions. Houm employs home checkers to take care of listing photos and viewings and the company acts as a guarantor and insures landlords against missed rent payments while using data to give sellers an idea of what price to list their home at.

Houm currently operates in its native Chile as well as Colombia and Mexico where it set up in the capital last Spring. It is currently setting up shop in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Tijuana and has plans to be present in 15 cities by the end of the year.

"Our arrival in Mexico has brought us a lot of good things. The users quickly understood the benefits of our platform that backs processes which are totally online," commented Camilo Marroquín, CSO & Co-Founder of Houm.

The company's expansion from a startup to an employer of some 330 workers (according to Linkedin) has been fuelled by investment from the likes of Fifth Wall and Goodwater Capital with the company raising three separate rounds in 2021 according to Crunchbase.

Much like similar Latin American PropTech ventures Aptuno and La Haus, which have both entered the market in the last 2 years, Houm sees Mexico as a potential source of rapid growth. All three companies are backed by significant foreign investment and are using technology to overcome a stifling bureaucracy and lack of trust in the housing market