Bangalore-based proptech company Ivy Homes understands that just like buying a home, selling a home can be a stressful exercise. This company is not a property listing marketplace. Homeowners looking to sell their property contact Ivy Homes. After conducting an in-depth evaluation based on more than 80 parameters and due diligence, the company uses its unique pricing model and offers to purchase the property at a competitive price. If the owner accepts the offer, the entire sales process can be as short as two weeks. Ivy Homes then renovates the property and puts it up for sale. For homeowners, the entire process is fast, transparent, legal, hassle-free and ensures liquid capital with minimal time lag.
We make offers on homes using our proprietary pricing model, which captures transaction data on each property and then uses a machine learning model to predict the home’s true value. The price depends on many factors including the sale prices of comparable properties, the unique features of the house (number of balconies, direct light, quality of fittings etc.) and the estimated cost of the reconstruction,” said Abhilash Narahari, Co-Founder and CEO, Ivy. Houses, explaining the concept of their start.
Pritam Thakur, Founder Ivy Homes The company’s value proposition is a transaction platform that buys a seller’s property, making it a shorter end-to-end process. Other players in the market are mainly discovery platforms. They offer property listing sites and other related services,” says Thakur.
Narahari says selling a home can be difficult, and the average sales cycle in urban areas can range from a few months to two years. Not all owners are waiting for a long and fair market value of their property in a certain period of time. People who do not live in the same city find it difficult to control the sale of property remotely. Narahari says Ivy Homes addresses all these concerns of owners.
So, how does the company allay fears that customers are getting a fair deal and property market value? “Our offer prices are based on actual transaction prices. We disclose this data whenever requested. We use data science to estimate the sales price and cash flow for a particular home (or time on the market). This is done by aggregating millions of data points from a variety of publicly available sources. “We have deployed a tree-based decision to determine the real value of the property,” says Narahari.
The company has an in-house legal team that does due diligence on every property it acquires (and sells) to ensure that the person seeking to sell the property is the rightful owner and that the property is free of any claims. “This allows us to further ensure that the buyer ultimately gets a home with clean ownership,” added Thakur.
Suresh Raman, who sold his house in Sobha Rose through Ivy Homes, said he was satisfied. “I was struggling to find a buyer, and Ivy stepped in to help me. I sold my house to them in less than a month. Another home seller, Suresh Gupta, said, “Selling my home remotely through Ivy was a breeze when I lived in another city. What particularly impressed me was their openness and transparency in their assessment of my home.” Siresh was a remote house owner in Brigade Harmony.
The company’s primary source of revenue is selling renovated homes. He can sell the house he bought for renovations at a slightly higher price than he bought it for. The company earns some additional income from the fees it receives for providing affiliate services.
The founders claim that Ivy Homes is the first of its kind ProProtech in the Indian market. As no player in the country is buying real estate so far, they have no comparable competitor. There are similar players globally like Opendoor, Loft and Habi but none of them have operations in India. Ivy Homes officially launched its operations in Bangalore in January 2022 and is looking to mark its first year with a total transaction value of Rs 100 crore from an average of 10 transactions in a month. The company recently raised $5.75 million in equity and $1.3 million in debt in a seed round from investors including Hosla Ventures, Venture Highway, Y Combinator, GFCC, Foundation, Better Capital, Titan Capital and Rebright Partners.
“As a home buyer, the excitement of owning my dream home is often replaced by the stress of completing the transaction. The process is broken. To transform the customer experience, you need to own the entire process, and that’s what Ivy Homes is doing. In a market like India, real estate is not just about buying, it’s very important.” For a customer in a market where life is a standard, rethinking her experience is a big win,” says Ivy Homes investor Praia Venture Highway.
Both founders have a background in real estate. Thakur has previously worked as a real estate developer and the Nerahari family is in the real estate business.
Ivy Homes currently operates only in Bangalore and the fund plans to expand its geographical footprint to other cities in India. “Real estate is the largest asset class in India, which makes our market very large, about Rs 4 lakh crores. And our proposition of quick liquidation is attractive and beneficial to home sellers. We plan to expand significantly in Bangalore and triple our monthly turnover by the end of this year.” We will also cover most of the micro markets in Bangalore by the end of 2022 and enter other Indian cities by 2023,” said Thakur.
