Propertymate, a proptech startup that simplifies the homebuying experience of new construction homes, announced today that they raised $5.5M in seed funding. With given investments, the company aims to expand to new markets in the US and rebrands as NewHomesMate. The 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.
In 2021 the company raised $1M in the pre-seed round led by Pragmatech Ventures, who joined as investors in this round as well.
In this seed round, the company has raised $5.5M 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).
"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.
The United States is experiencing an accelerating housing shortage crisis. 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 the way how people think about their homes and where they want to live. 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. But 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 still, finding information about new construction homes and navigating the home-buying process is very confusing for home buyers.
NewHomesMate (ex-Propertymate) 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, in addition to the first market - Austin, TX. With its new capital, NewHomesMate's immediate priority is to expand its service to another eight markets.
"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.
Even though the startup operates in the US, both founders are Ukraine-born and managed to grow the business despite the war and being part of the team in Ukraine. The main headquarter of the startup is based in Austin, with a team of 91 people that they plan to extend.
About Propertymate
Propertymate is an Austin-based startup that helps homebuyers to search, compare, and buy new construction homes. The platform aims to digitize and simplify the new construction home-buying process by matching buyers with home builders. Propertymate was founded by Dan Hnatkovskyy and Sofia Vyshnevska. In 2020, the startup graduated from the acceleration program Techstars in Austin. In 2023 raised a 5.5M seed round.
