HomeLister wants to help you sell your house – TechCrunch
Summary
By automating the sales process, HomeLister says it fixes the cost of the sell-side agent, allowing sellers to save $21,000 on average and shortening the median days on market from 16 days to 9.CEO Lindsay McLean started the Santa Monica, California-based company in 2015 with attorney and real estate broker Jennifer Stein, after her own home-selling experience.I worked with a top-notch agent who helped me to purchase my home. However, I found myself doing most of the work for the sale showing preparations, coordinating showing times, researching home comps in the area and setting the initial sale price, McLean recalls.Her home sold in less than a week at the price she had set in a double-ended deal allowing her real estate agent to keep the full 6% commission.Ultimately, I ended up writing a commission check that was more than 25% of my equity at closing. All of its services are entirely online and virtual.The main difference with the premium package is that you have a real estate professional guiding you from start to finish, including helping you price your home and strategize, and then negotiate offers and any questions throughout, McLean said.While the company declined to reveal hard revenue figures, McLean said it grew revenue by over 3x from 2020 to 2021 and increased its market share by 450% in the same time period.Besides a geographic expansion, HomeLister plans to enhance its current offering and bring additional services to its site, such as title services and automated transaction management.Most sellers are now comparing us to traditional realtors, and some to low-service flat fee MLS providers who list you and then walk away, McLean said. You get as much help as you want throughout the process, with the guarantee of a flat fee that is tied to how much work we do, not the price of your home.M13 partner Karl Alomar noted in a written statement that it has been a strong sellers market in real estate in recent years, with demand heavily outstripping supply.This period of quick sales has clearly illustrated the inefficiency and cost implications of the traditional brokerage service: a model that is prime for disruption, he said. HomeLister attacks this issue with a thoughtful and valuable digital solution that has great traction with sellers and significant breathing room for expansion and growth.Satya Patel, partner at Homebrew, pointed out that real estate is often the largest asset for most people.HomeLister is re-designing the home selling process to ensure that sellers keep as much of their equity as possible, which should ultimately help buyers as well, he said in a written statement.The headline of this article was updated post-publication to correct the fact that HomeLister does charge a commission, just not one that is a percentage of a home sale.