Ravi Chandran
Entera, the premier real estate technology platform that enables investors to efficiently access, make data driven decisions and purchase residential real estate, announced it has raised $7.5 million in funding. The round was led by Bullpen Capital and Craft Ventures, with participation from ValueStream Ventures and industry leader Chris Heller, former CEO of Keller Williams and currently the Chief Real Estate Officer of OJO Labs. Real estate investors use Entera to access 20% more properties, make confident decisions, and win twice as many properties at 2.5x faster rate than the traditional process in the market.
Launched in 2017, Entera enables investors to easily find and buy residential real estate. Powered by machine-learning, Entera’s end-to-end residential real estate investment platform modernizes the real estate buying process. Entera’s proprietary discovery algorithms, intelligent tools and tech-enabled local expert real estate service team help our clients access and evaluate more properties, make data-driven investment decisions, and win more deals – 100% online.
“Real estate markets have long since moved online, but prior to Entera, there was no unified platform designed for professional real estate buyers and funds, a large and growing segment, to find, price or transact,” said Eric Wiesen, general partner at Bullpen Capital. “As more professional capital moves into residential real estate, companies like Entera who provide leading technology and tools and a highly experienced team will play a critical role.”
Entera will use this capital to expand the reach of its technology platform, and continue to build out its world class team who have serviced over $12Bn of single family transactions. As traditional methods of investing in residential real estate prove to be inadequate, Entera changes the game by offering access to on & off-market properties at scale, machine learning discovery, powerful decision tools, and local tech-enabled transaction services.
Many of the largest residential real estate investors use Entera daily to find, choose and buy homes across 13 markets. “Similar to brokerages like E-Trade and Charles Schwab, Entera delivers 100% cloud-based enterprise level solutions that enable investors to make the best decisions and buy with ease,” said Co-founder and CEO Martin Kay. “With hundreds of thousands of available properties our platform unlocks billions of dollars of investment capital looking to enter residential real estate in a meaningful way.”
The largest residential real estate investors rely on Entera to source and buy properties at scale everyday. Entera is based in San Francisco, New York & Houston, with satellite service offices in 13 additional markets across the US.
“Entera’s platform, with its intuitive tools and user-friendly interface, is the real estate application that professional buyers and funds have been waiting for,” said Lainy Painter of Craft Ventures. “This technology will let people buy and sell properties with ease, transparency and confidence, enabling investment capital to flow far more freely into residential real estate.”
Mr Paul Ho, chief mortgage officer at iCompareLoan, said, “the real estate industry is rapidly changing, and customers expect better experiences and turn-around-time when they purchase a property. This multi-million dollar partnership will further drive innovation for the benefit of customers.”
In keeping up with proptech revolution that is exploding everywhere, property agents “must upgrade or die”, said Mr Ho. He noted that many property agencies struggle to keep up with all the regulatory changes in the industry, as well as the changing financial calculations for acquiring a property. He urged property agents to master the basics in property financing, refinancing, taxation and CPF.
Mr Ho said that iCompareLoan.com runs a full 2 – 3 days course on how property agents can produce such reports for their customers. He added that the trademarked course teaches Property Agents how to generate complicated Financial calculations using – Home Loan Report (TM) – in 3 mins flat. This helps Property agents to close deals faster and serve customers more professionally.
Proptech is technology and real estate coming together to propel the real estate industry forward. The proptech ecosystem is flourishing now in many parts of the world, thanks in large part to ample venture capital, community efforts in local tech hubs, and an increasing realisation that there is a real need for innovation in the sector.
Proptech will have an impact on traditional business operating models. Whether this impact turns out to be positive or negative depends largely on how real estate players will use them to their advantage. These technologies are however still a long way away from replacing human judgment, touch, and ability to react to dynamic changes, which are all critical to the decision-making process.
A recent research report by Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) said, “proptech will be used to drive tenant experience. A smart building can drive operational performance but it can also enhance human experience. Without tenants, a building as an asset will perform poorly, regardless of how operationally efficient it may be, or the amount of capital growth targeted. This change is already being recognised, with tenant experience a top-three driver. As operational efficiency increasingly comes under control, we expect the next wave of proptech to focus on satisfying the future needs of the occupier, wherever and however they choose to work.”
C&W added that the overarching opportunity in proptech adoption is to generate data-driven reporting more quickly, which in turn will facilitate more insightful decision making. Doing this will link the building to the corporate occupier and ultimately to the asset’s financial performance in a clearer, more systematic way.
“Surprisingly, respondents told us there is comparatively little concern around security, privacy or the complexity of the task at hand. Undoubtedly data encryption and storage have become increasingly secure, though data breaches remain a regular part of the media cycle.
“Lesser concerns on security risk may result from the perceived lack of value in the data to potential hackers. However, we argue the focus should be on securing access to a building’s management system rather than the actual data it logs.”
