Andrew Wang's Valon returns to the Fintech 50 for its third year as one of two companies in the real estate sector.
Illustration by Stephanie Cui for Forbes magazine.Photo courtesy of Varon
SPersistent high interest rates continue to negatively impact home sales, mortgage refinances, and commercial real estate values, creating a difficult environment for fintech startups looking to disrupt the industry.
The impact of the Federal Reserve's dramatic rate hikes starting in March 2022 can be clearly seen in both real estate activity and the 2024 Fintech 50 list. According to the National Association of Realtors, home sales in 2023 fell to their lowest level in nearly 30 years, and the number of mortgage refinance applications fell 88% compared to the so-called “ReFi boom” of 2020.
Meanwhile, the number of real estate winners on the list will drop from five in 2022, as the online mortgage marketplace and two services that enable home purchases (one for renters and one for investors) have been removed from the list. By 2023, the number has decreased to just two. Now, one of the survivors of 2023 is gone. Longtime List member Cadre, a platform that allows ordinary people to invest in commercial real estate, was acquired by YieldStreet in late 2023 for a reported $100 million, a fraction of its previous valuation of $800 million. Part of it.
Last year's only survivor was a more pure technology business, cloud-based mortgage repayment platform Valon. Sales are booming, rising from just $5 million a year ago to $30 million in 2023.
Additionally, there is one new entrant in the real estate industry on the list. Groundfloor Finance has experienced steady growth since his founding 11 years ago. The company packages loans to residential real estate developers and gives individual investors the opportunity to invest for as little as $100. Most of the $10 million in external funding comes from users of the platform itself. Each year we offer existing shareholders the opportunity to purchase additional shares, and every other year we conduct a public offering open to new investors. Over the past year, the company's customer base has grown by about 40,000 people.
The two real estate companies selected for Fintech 50 2024 are:
ground floor finance
Package loans to residential real estate developers and allow ordinary people with as little as $100 to buy real estate investment trusts and real estate notes online in lieu of mutual funds. In October 2023, Groundfloor launched a new product that spreads users' funds across all investment opportunities on the platform, creating a diversified portfolio across 50-100 projects. The company makes money by charging real estate developer borrowers origination fees, closing costs and application fees, which brought in $26.7 million in 2023.
Headquarters: Atlanta, Georgia.
Funding: $10 million from individual shareholders, Medipower and Fintech Ventures.
Latest valuation: 234 million dollars.
Last evaluation date: October 2023.
sincerely: By early 2024, the startup's 240,000 customers had invested more than $1 billion in the platform.
Co-founder: Brian Dalley, 52, and Nick Bhargava, 39, were born in the Employment Act of 2000, which introduced new exemptions that allowed small investments to be made without the heavy compliance burden imposed on large companies. After that, he founded the company.
Valon
Valon, a cloud-based mortgage repayment platform, automates payments and allows borrowers to check their balance and other information about their loan online. The company's customers include mortgage servicers Freedom Mortgage and Marlin Mortgage.
Headquarters: New York, New York.
Funding: $125 million from Andreessen Horowitz, 166 2nd, Rhythm Capital and others.
Latest valuation: 1.1 billion dollars.
Last evaluation date: July 2022.
sincerely: Valon's revenue increased from $5 million in 2022 to $30 million in 2023.
Co-founder: CEO Andrew Wang, 31, previously served as a principal at Soros Fund Management. CTO Jon Hsu, 31, former software engineer at Twilio
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