NAR’s Second Century Ventures plus existing investors accelerate zavvie’s growth with $1.75 million inside round.
PropTech startup zavvie, the first complete agent-centric brokerage selling solutions platform and marketplace, announced the completion of a $1.75 million inside round from existing investors, including Second Century Ventures, backed by the National Association of Realtors.
The rapid market penetration of verified institutional buyers, including iBuyers and “buy before you sell” Bridge Buyers, has fueled zavvie’s expansion. More than 60,000 real estate sales professionals from some of the nation’s most successful and fastest-growing multi-state brokerages have access to zavvie-powered platforms, which typically present over 100 offers a day nationwide.
“iBuyers and Bridge Buyers are buying more homes than ever in almost every major market,” said Lane Hornung, zavvie co-founder and CEO. “The market opportunity for zavvie is massive as we are uniquely positioned at the center of this growth,” Hornung added. “By keeping agents involved in all real estate selling options, zavvie facilitates the convergence between the traditional industry incumbents with the new disruptors and innovators.
“Already zavvie has arguably achieved the fastest adoption by the largest residential brokerages of any software platform,” he added. According to Hornung, the addition of broker partners, whose agents request purchase offers from verified buyer partners, has accelerated the growth of zavvie’s marketplace.
Hornung notes that PropTech currently is attracting more than $350 million a week in new capital, according to Weekly Proptech, published by the Center for Real Estate Technology & Innovation. Investors are attracted by the size and scale of the real estate industry, which is home to America’s largest asset class and annual transactions exceeding $1.6 trillion in total value.
Moreover, research shows the top 120,000 agents handle more than 50 percent of all deal flow and closed real estate transactions in the U.S. The top 100 brokerages handle 55 percent of all transactions. And currently, 30 percent of the top 100 brokerages already use a zavvie-powered platform.
“Our platform aggregates homes for purchases from tens of thousands of agents who represent millions of homeowners and delivers deals to enterprise buyers with billions of capital to place,” Hornung said.
Mike DelPrete, a global real estate tech strategist, leading iBuyer expert and member of zavvie’s Board of Directors, reports the market trend of more people selling their homes to a verified institutional buyer versus another individual buyer will continue to grow significantly over the next several years. “iBuyers survived COVID and are rebounding to their pre-pandemic levels,” said DelPrete, “and we are seeing an even bigger growth surge among the buy-before-you-sell bridge providers.”
Hornung agrees, noting that the explosion in the popularity of bridge solutions is driving zavvie’s most recent growth. zavvie has added several new verified Bridge Buyers, including EasyKnock, Knock, and Ribbon, as Verified Buyer Partners.
zavvie’s Verified Buyer Partners – including iBuyers, Bridge Buyers and Listing Concierges – collectively on track to purchase more than 85,000 homes in 2021.
zavvie also recently announced a partnership with Leading Real Estate Companies of the World®, a global network of 550 top independent real estate firms.
“Homeowners want two things when they are thinking about selling a home. First, they want to know about every option available to sell. Second, they want to work with a trusted real agent to walk them through all the choices. The zavvie platform is the only technology that does both at the same time,” said Hornung.