New York-based real estate brokerage and tech company Compass will acquire Modus, a Seattle startup that automates the title and escrow phase of closing on a home.
Compass plans to integrate Modus’ software into its tech-fueled platform used by more than 18,000 real estate agents across 165-plus U.S. cities. The Modus brand will continue to exist and its 60-plus employee team will join Compass, which employs more than 2,000 people.
Founded in 2018, Modus digitizes the home closing process. Last year it raised a $12.5 million round co-led by NFX and Felicis Ventures. Other backers include Liquid 2 Ventures; Mucker Capital; Hustle Fund; 500 Startups; Rambleside; and Cascadia Ventures. The company has raised $14 million to date.
“Compass’s customer-first approach is right in line with the way we think about our business – since day one we have been focused on empowering agents and their clients by improving all aspects of the home-closing process,” Modus CEO and co-founder Alex Day said in a statement. “We are incredibly excited to become part of the Compass team at this pivotal time in our industry, and look forward to joining in their mission of building the future of real estate for agents and their clients.”
Day and Chairman Jai Sim previously worked together at Seattle lunch delivery startup Peach. The company’s other co-founder, Abbas Guvenilir, spent nearly six years at ServiceNow before teaming up with Day and Sim.
SoftBank-backed Compass, which has raised $1.6 billion, opened a large new Seattle tech center last year, right in the middle of Amazon’s headquarters campus in the South Lake Union neighborhood. It also recently hired Amazon veteran Greg Hart, a former technical advisor to Jeff Bezos, as its chief product officer.
Compass laid off 15% of its staff, or about 375 employees, in March due to the pandemic. But its business has bounced back as demand for homes increases. Compass set revenue records in June, July, and August while adding more than 3,000 agents over the past six months.
Compass has more than 600 brokers in the Seattle region, and nearly 200 employees.
Its chief technology officer Joseph Sirosh, a former Microsoft and Amazon exec, is based in the Seattle region.
“Modus is transforming title and escrow from an offline, antiquated undertaking into a transparent tech-enabled solution that saves real estate agents time by simplifying the entire closing process,” Sirosh said in a statement.
