Josh Jensen bought his first house in Peoria, Ill., when he was 23.
He sold the house to pay for business school and over the course of his tech career — first as a mechanical engineer and then as an executive for startup companies — Jensen and his wife bought, renovated and flipped several homes.
“I bought 10 homes over the last decade,” said Jensen. “I have renovated them, sold them, gone through the inspection process. And every time I go through the process I’m underwhelmed.”
That deep, deep experience with the process of buying and selling homes led Jensen to found Inspectify, a marketplace for home inspections and repairs designed to streamline the process of home buying (and selling).
Through the platform, buyers can instantly book inspections and receive repair estimates. The company partners with real estate agents to accelerate transactions.
“It’s leveraging the data to connect with service providers to make the overall processes much more streamlined,” Jensen said. “We can connect with home buyers to ultimately do the work. They use this information to help the transition from buying to owning and better managing a home.”
Jensen’s company, unlike many startups, is already making money. The company currently charges a platform fee off of every inspection booked, and Inspectify takes around 15% of the cost of the inspection.
People spend on average between $380 and $450 on inspections, and the Los Angeles-based company isn’t short on clients. Jensen said the company is growing its revenue 60% on a monthly basis since its launch in August of last year.
Jensen previously ran operations for the Andreessen Horowitz-backed company FlyHomes. And the other members of the founding team also have a history in the real estate game. Co-founder Taylor Zwisler, a former executive at a startup called Vault (and a real estate agent in a past life), joined Jensen in launching the Inspectify business along with Denis Bellavance, the company’s chief technology officer and a former Amazon engineer and serial entrepreneur.
Bellavance previously founded Peach and was a longtime employee at Zillow, launching the company’s Canadian business.
“My wife and I have an interesting model on real estate investment,” said Jensen. “We’ll buy a house, renovate it and live in it and then move. It’s been a big passion of ours… initially it was a side gig to bring in more capital.”
Now poised to graduate from Y Combinator’s latest cohort, Inspectify is coming along at a good time for startups focused on real estate.
Over the last few years, investments in property technology and real estate management services for both the residential and commercial market have soared. In all, venture capital investment in property tech totaled $1.6 billion through May. That number is down dramatically, nearly 70% year-on-year, according to data from Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, cited by National Real Estate Investor. Even that downside came with a historical upside, with median deal size was 63% above the historical average, according to the report.
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