Landis, a growing real estate investment platform that enables institutional investors to buy and sell residential real estate, is buying GoldenKey, a real estate startup that raised $4.5 million over the last few years before shutting down recently.
TechCrunch has the details on the acquisition, which sees Landis acquiring GoldenKey’s intellectual property and data, but not its workforce.
GoldenKey, which was formerly called SoloPro, tried to build a business by offering “on-demand” real estate services at a flat fee, taking aim at the traditional commission-based real estate model.
The company was able to secure more than $4 million in funding, including investments by Lowe’s and its venture capital arm, Lowe’s Ventures.
But that wasn’t enough to survive, and now the company is selling of its technology and data to Landis.
TechCrunch has more details:
GoldenKey’s model involved offering home sellers either a set of unbundled services (listing, home showing, transaction coordination, etc.) or a flat rate bundle for selling their homes. Real estate isn’t an easy market to disrupt, though.
Landis, interestingly enough, is tackling a very different side of the residential real estate market. The company, which was co-founded last year by Tom Petit and Cyril Berdugo, helps large-scale investors buy and sell properties. These investors, who then typically rent out those homes, can use the platform to perform all the steps for completing a transaction. And because it’s a private platform, Landis doesn’t face the hassle of dealing with the multiple listing services that tend to have regional monopolies over real estate listing data.
And now, the company has more data to use in building the technological backbone of its platform.
