While you can find the home of your dreams using a laptop and secure a mortgage through an app, the home buying process is still a fairly low-tech affair. That’s changing, though, thanks in part to a handful of Chicago startups.
Whether it’s using data to match buyers with the perfect realtor or making homeowners insurance as easy to buy as car insurance, these five Chicago tech companies are changing the way people buy homes.
Finding the ideal community is almost as tough, if not more so, than finding the ideal house. That’s why Neighborhoods.com lets home buyers search for properties by neighborhood. Alongside home listings, users see ratings for nearby schools, and each ‘hood has its own guide complete with information on everything from the local culture to dining and nightlife options. Future plans for Neighborhoods.com include rolling out a more robust, map-based search experience and integrating new data sources into its platform.
Home buying traditionally involves leveraging personal references and using word of mouth to find the best service providers, be they real estate agents or mortgage professionals. Techstars Chicago 2017 alum Abode does things a bit differently, using data to match home buyers with real estate pros. In addition to matching users with the right real estate agents, lenders, inspectors, movers and more, the startup’s cloud-based platform also manages the myriad of documents associate with the purchasing process.
FlyHomes’ platform makes home buying a digital process from beginning to end, with users able to search for houses, schedule tours and submit offers all from a single portal. When it’s time to make an offer, the company’s in-house negotiating team leverages a proprietary analytics suite to ensure users get the best price possible. FlyHomes rewards users of its platform with things like Lyft credits for taking tours and frequent flyer miles or no closing costs given to those who complete the purchase process. The company raised $4 million last fall, with part of that round earmarked to grow its Chicago office.
One of the least fun and most complex parts of buying a home is purchasing homeowners insurance. While no startup is capable of making this task fun, exactly, Kin Insurance has developed technology to streamline and demystify the application process. The startup uses publicly available data and satellite imagery to pre-fill applications. All users need to do is enter their address and pick from a few coverage options. Kin Insurance is currently available to homeowners in Florida and Texas, but the company plans to be available across the United States by summer.
The first and most important part of buying a home is saving. That can be hard to do when you’re a renter, though. Enter Digs, a company that helps renters save for their dream houses by encouraging their landlords to offer one percent cashback on rent that’s paid on time. Digs matches the contributions of landlords up to two percent, enabling renters to passively save hundreds for a house per year.
