More than 40% of homebuyers experience some form of remorse within two years of their purchase. The digital area has transformed the purchase experience with 9/10 house hunters relying on the internet as their primary research source. While there are a plethora of destinations where you can go to find the basics of a property (size, # of bedrooms, bathrooms, etc.), Localize takes it one step further with a repository of unique data for each property to ensure that buyers are well informed about what will likely be the biggest investment of their lives – their homes. For buyers, the platform provides proprietary intelligence on factors that impact the homeownership experience but are not routinely disclosed in listings or easily apparent during a showing like architectural styles, amenities, building policies, light exposure, and crime, in addition to the property details you would expect to find. The startup also offers a lead generation platform for real estate agents so that they connect with interested buyers right at the moment they are ready to view their ideal properties.
AlleyWatch caught up with President and COO Omer Granot to learn more about the inspiration for the business, how the platform leverages technology and data to simplify the home buying process for both agents and purchasers, the company’s expansion plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $36M, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised a Series C of $25M led by Pitango Growth Fund (led by Chemi Peres), with investment from Avigdor Willenz (Founder of Galileo, Annapurna Labs, Habana Labs), Zvi Limon (Founding Partner at Magma VC), the Luxembourg-based co-investment fund Maor Investments (founded by Philip Guez and Eric Elalouf, Venture Capital Fund Celesta (formerly WRVI, led by Roni Hefetz), Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, and others.
Tell us about the product or service that Localize offers.
Localize is reinventing the home buying experience using AI, data, and a knowledgeable team of homebuying advisors who understand the NYC real estate market. For homebuyers, the company offers a marketplace that aggregates information from hundreds of data sources. The goal of Localize is to help support buyers from search until keys in hand, providing all the necessary information to allow homebuyers to get the full picture behind properties they are considering and the overall home buying process. In addition to providing traditional listing data like price and number of bedrooms, homebuyers have access to unique, proprietary insights about each property that are only available on Localize. Some insights include: natural light analysis, view analysis and the potential effect of future construction on a property’s existing view, crime rates relative to surrounding areas, elevator functionality, details on noise complaints, planned construction, and more.
The company also recently launched a new product offering called Hunter. Leveraging the available insights in the Localize marketplace, the service serves as a lead qualification, nurturing, and engagement tool for busy real estate agents and brokers, helping them cut down on manual tasks that they often are unable to efficiently complete for all of the leads in their pipeline. Localize helps with time-consuming processes like building a full customer profile, clarifying buyers’ needs, qualifying buyers, matching listings to home buyers based on their requirements, and nurturing buyers until they are ready to move forward to the home viewing process. A key benefit of using Hunter, for both the agent and homebuyer, is making the home buying process more seamless, while also making it extremely personalized. Using complex artificial intelligence algorithms and a human team of homebuying advisors, the Hunter service allows agents to share a lead list, creating a unique profile for each homebuyer via text message communication and matching them with the property matches based on their preferences and capabilities. Once buyers are ready to view a property in person, Hunter connects them back to their corresponding agent, allowing the agent to begin showing properties in person. For agents, Hunter helps qualify and communicate with a larger number of leads than the agent could generally work with on their own. For buyers, who can sign up to interact with Hunter from the Localize website, Hunter makes it easier to identify properties that meet their unique house hunting needs via SMS.
What inspired the start of Localize?
Our founders were frustrated that they wanted to buy a home but felt like they didn’t have any of the information that they needed to make such a big decision. So, they set out to make sense of the world’s real estate data by bringing it into one place.
What market does Localize target and how big is it?
Localize is currently servicing the New York City market of homebuyers and looks to expand to additional markets in the future. Localize aims to help homebuyers, as well as real estate agents and brokerages, make homebuying better for everyone.
What’s your business model?
Localize is free for homebuyers. Agents and brokerages pay a licensing fee to gain access to Localize’s technology and a success fee once a buyer closes on a home.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business??
The residential real estate market suffered immensely amid COVID-19, especially in heavily populated areas like New York City. Starting in 2021, the market saw a tremendous recovery trend, which translated to a shortage in supply (properties for sale) and also a rising demand (flocking of homebuyers back to the city). These factors resulted in significant price increases, which are expected to continue as vaccine rates increase and the city returns to normal activity. Localize managed to leverage the rising demand for NYC real estate and create an impressive clientele within a short period of time.
The residential real estate market suffered immensely amid COVID-19, especially in heavily populated areas like New York City. Starting in 2021, the market saw a tremendous recovery trend, which translated to a shortage in supply (properties for sale) and also a rising demand (flocking of homebuyers back to the city). These factors resulted in significant price increases, which are expected to continue as vaccine rates increase and the city returns to normal activity. Localize managed to leverage the rising demand for NYC real estate and create an impressive clientele within a short period of time.
What was the funding process like?
Investors were very excited about the technology that we created and how it continues to evolve to fill additional gaps in the homebuying process. Real estate is a well-known pain point, and investors were eager to learn how quickly homebuyers were engaging with Hunter and that agents were excited by the product as well. They saw it as an opportunity that has yet to be addressed.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Localize’s technology is truly groundbreaking, and the future we are working to create is a few levels above the current state of the industry so we initially had to focus on proving to investors that the technology actually works. Once we gave them a peak under the hood, they bought in.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
First and foremost, our team is extremely strong with experienced leaders from multiple industries and verticals, and we work together well to move a product forward. As we transitioned the Hunter product to be a product for agents as well as buyers, our investors were excited by the expanded market, but also by how quickly the market lined up to leverage and adopt our technology.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Scale the teams in the US and in TLV, specifically the sales, operations, and engineering teams.
Roll out Hunter and the LocalizeHQ to thousands of agents in the US.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
It is obviously important to have enough capital to stay in the game.
The key questions to answer are: what value are you delivering and whom you’re delivering that value to. Once these questions are answered, it is much easier to prove your value and secure capital to operate and scale.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
The funds raised will be used to expand the company’s operations in Israel and the US in the form of further development of its product and additional product offerings, expanding the research and development and sales and marketing groups.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC
My favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC is Wolfgang’s steakhouse 🙂
