Prevu Raises $2 Million in Seed Funding
Digital home-buying platform Prevu has raised $2 million in seed funding. The round, which was led by Corigin Ventures, closed September 12.
Rather than focus on the seller experience, Prevu was designed for buyers. Prevu’s Smart Buyer platform equips buyers with the tools and advice they need to guide them through the early phases of the homebuying process. The company’s agents are on hand to answer questions and assist buyers to schedule a tour, make an offer, negotiate a purchase and close on a transaction. In addition, Prevu passes two-thirds of its commission back to each buyer who completes a purchase on the platform, delivering a rebate of up to 2%.
“The bottom line is that the traditional residential real estate industry is antiquated and inefficient, with the majority of agents pulling clients offline at the first opportunity to control the process,” said Prevu co-founder Thomas Kutzman. Buyers no longer need to rely on agents as the gatekeepers of information, which is available at their fingertips online. We were incredibly frustrated by our own experiences in buying real estate, and we sought to create a truly intuitive model that gives control back to consumers and eliminates a lot of the stress involved. Our Smart Buyer™ platform was created to address these inefficiencies and provide greater control to buyers, while delivering rebates that help to offset the significant expenses involved in purchasing a home.”
Both Kutzman and co-founder Chase Marsh have finance backgrounds, knowledge of the capital markets and experience evaluating public companies and equity market structures. As they evaluated the existing landscape of traditional and tech-enabled residential real estate brokerages, they discovered that the majority of traditional agents spend up to 70 percent of their time on new client acquisition, with only 30 percent dedicated to customer service. As a result, Prevu’s technology is designed to drive agent efficiency, enabling its network of local experts to do a higher volume of deals and spend 100 percent of their time focused on customer service.
Prevu currently operates in metropolitan New York and Connecticut.
The company plans to use the funding to grow its engineering team and strategically expand to new geographic markets.
