Propertymate – a proptech startup that simplifies the homebuying experience of new construction homes – announced that they raised $5.5M in seed funding. And with given investments, the company aims to expand to new markets in the US and rebrands as NewHomesMate. This new brand name reflects the focus on the new construction homes market and the mission to help homebuyers get the best experience of navigating and buying newly built homes.
Dan Hnatkovskyy and Sofia Vyshnevska launched NewHomesMate (formerly Propertymate) in 2020. And in 2021 the company raised $1 million in the pre-seed round led by Pragmatech Ventures, who joined as investors in this round as well.
With this seed round, the company has raised $5.5 million from Gaingels, Geek Ventures, Asymmetry Ventures, Unpopular Ventures, Flyer One Ventures, U.Ventures, Verras Capital, SID Venture Partners, and Pragmatech Ventures. Amongst angel investors in this round: David Morrison (ex-CEO Oliver Wyman), Adrian Slywotzky (American economist), Jonathan Wasserstrum (founder SquareFoot), John Gu (Norwest Venture Partners), Benny Czarny (founder Opswat).
The US is experiencing an accelerating housing shortage crisis. And according to an analysis from Realtor.com, the gap between single-family home constructions and household formations grew to 6.5 million homes between 2012 and 2022.
The pandemic changed how people think about their homes and where they want to live. And in many markets, new constructions very often were the only option to buy a home, avoiding bidding wars that were hiking the housing prices up. With growing interest rates, the picture changed completely. However, the Builders who were scaling their production in the past few years had no option but to adapt to changing market landscape, providing different options and incentives to make new builds more attractive. But finding information about new construction homes and navigating the home-buying process is very confusing for home buyers.
NewHomesMate (ex-Propertymate) had launched a new construction home marketplace to serve this specific cause. Since the last fundraising round company has scaled to 9 new markets: Dallas, Houston, Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa, San Antonio, Miami – Ft. Lauderdale, Raleigh-Durham, and Ocala-Gainesville along with the first market – Austin, TX. With the new funding round, NewHomesMate’s immediate priority is to expand its service to another eight markets.
Even though the startup operates in the US, both the founders are Ukraine-born and managed to grow the business despite the war and being part of the team in Ukraine. And the main headquarter of the startup is based in Austin, with a team of 91 people that they plan to extend.
KEY QUOTES:
“We were lucky to be the first investor in this round and witness the company growing over 11X within the last year while delivering a huge positive impact to local communities.”
— Ihar Mahaniok, Managing Partner at Geek Ventures
“These investments give our team a great opportunity to expand to new markets and deliver more value to homebuyers and builders. Propertymate rebrands as NewHomesMate to better reflect the focus on our mission to make the new construction home buying process a lot better. Also, within the next year, we plan to launch another eight markets, including Atlanta, Phoenix, Charlotte, Charleston, and Denver.”
— Dan Hnatkovskyy, Propertymate CEO and Co-founder
