A new Seattle startup wants to fill what it believes is a gap left by real estate sites like Zillow and Trulia.
Flipt launched today to provide home buyers and investors with detailed property information pertaining to potential investment value. The company crunches data from a variety of sources and then scores homes on three categories: Fix & Flip, Buy & Hold, or Rent.
Flipt was developed by the same team behind BuildersCloud, a Techstars Seattle graduate that helps construction companies share files and implement mobile collaboration. Andrey Nokhrin, who co-founded BuildersCloud, is also acting as CEO of Flipt.
Nokhrin told GeekWire that his new company differentiates from fellow real estate sites like Seattle-based Zillow and Trulia because of its complex algorithm that was developed with machine-learning capabilities.
“We move beyond a basic housing marketplace to not only provide data, but make sense of the information,” Nokhrin said.
That algorithm crunches data from a mix of both public — tax records, census data, county statistics, crime records, etc. — and proprietary information. Flipt also has an innovation called Computer Vision, which analyzes images of a house to search for external signals and estimate a home’s condition.
Here’s how Flipt describes each of its three scoring categories:
Fix & Flip: Predicting the short-term investment potential of a home. The score takes into account the location, foreclosure status, condition and age of the property to determine the potential return on investment of a quick turn-around project.
Buy & Hold: Calculating a property’s potential appreciation value over an extended period of time, incorporating data on current residential home values and speed of appreciation for the area and type of home to provide the composite score.
Rent Out: Estimating rent and cash flow potential crossed with specific details on demographics, property location, and number of bedrooms to determine the home’s rental potential.
Flipt makes money by selling advertising space to realtors, who can use the service to create their own targeted ads. Nokhrin said there’s more incentive for realtors to post on Flipt based on the company’s target market.
“Unlike other real estate sites, Flipt attracts users that are more educated buyers and sellers, not simple browsers, and generally have higher-level intent to make a transaction in the near future,” he said. “We also attract real estate investors who often buy and list multiple properties with an agent — and have a much higher customer lifetime value.”
Nokhrin was inspired to start Flipt after his family began searching for a new home. He saw a need for an online resource that analyzed each property to find its “hidden potential,” in terms of investment. Nokhrin also saw an opportunity to provide another way for realtors to reach buyers.
“I saw a desperate need for more effective advertising as the growing amount of home buyers every year start their home search and research online,” he said.
Flipt is funded off the same $1.1 million round that BuildersCloud raised this past August from 500 Startups founder Dave McClure, former Amazon.com and Facebook exec Rudy Gadre, Isilon co-founder Sujal Patel and others. Nokhrin noted that BuildersCloud is still operating and Flipt was born because he wanted a more consumer-facing product.
“While we’re focused heavily on our big data Flipt product, we’re really just dedicated to building a great company that continues to innovate in the construction and real estate technology sectors,” Nokhrin said.
For now, Flipt will focus on homes in five states — Washington, Florida, Nevada, New York and California — and potentially expand to other locations or even different types of properties down the road.
