If you entered a Dubai bank to request a mortgage in 2020, there is a good chance that you spend months buried in documents or face a huge price difference in lists. Such experiences have led Jad Antoun to start Huspy, a startup rationalizing the way people buy digital houses.
Over the past five years, the company has become one of the largest water proptechs and has extended to Spain, providing digital tools to find houses and obtain mortgages.
Huspy has just ended a 59 million dollars B series to double operations through the Middle East and extend its European presence, led by the existing investor Balderton Capital.
In 2022, Huspy raised more than $ 40 million in series A and an extension of A Who’s Who of Global Investors, notably Balderton Capital, Founders Fund and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India & Sea).
Other investors include ex -boring partners, Capital Turmeric, Cotu projects, by Ventures, Dara Management and Ke Partners. The new capital will feed Huspy’s continuous growth in water and Spain and will support its launch in Saudi Arabia, Antoun told Techcrunch in an interview.
This investment is important because Proptech has been a difficult sector in the past two years. Companies like Opendoor and Compass have struggled to maintain assessments and profitability in higher American interest rates. Many startups have also burned money and had trouble.
Huspy has “built a reproducible and effective game book for city launches, and their rhythm of innovation – in particular around AI tools for brokers and agents – continues to increase the bar of the whole industry,” said Rana Yared, general partner of Balderton Capital.
Antoun said Huspy that he had learned through his first water market how to target pain points in a country’s mortgage process. He concluded partnerships with the main banks and introduced digital pre-approtations on a platform connecting brokers and borrowers.
In three years, the company said it has captured 30% of the water mortgage market (25% in Dubai, one of the most active real estate markets in the world). This traction, and the exclusive banking relations that it built accordingly, have become a springboard for expansion.
In 2022, he began to transform into Spain, a fragmented real estate market with more than 100,000 registered agents, according to Antoun.
Rather than having stocks such as Ibuyer models or working as a traditional brokerage, Huspy manages a model based on the water and Spain network. Independent agents use the platform to access real estate prospects from markets such as Property Finder and Idealista, while Huspy provides CRM tools, transaction support and integrated mortgage products through its banking partners.
It is a low -scale approach that looks like Uber for real estate more than Zillow.
Antoun, previously in the investment team of the VC Bec capital, based in Dubai, and the deputy CEO Ziad Nassar, who directs the European expansion of Huspy, believes that the company has found a reproducible model which will be difficult to reproduce: enter medium -sized cities with a volume of high transactions and a low agent workforce, creating supply through the market partnerships, High-end agents on the platform, and superimpose the distribution.
In less than a year, Huspy claims to be one of the three main real estate companies in Valence by volume of transactions. It already operates in six cities in Spain, where it requires growth of more than 20 times in annual shift.
“I think it will be difficult for someone to compete on the mortgage product specifically on the two markets,” said Antoun. “We have just been longer here, and in Spain, we have better efficiency.”
Antoun says that the startup has helped more than 25,000 people buy houses on its markets and have increased income by more than 10 times since 2022. The platform, which has gained income from commissions and success, generally real estate agents and banks, facilitates more than $ 7 billion in transactions.
Over the next four years, the company plans to embark on most major cities in Europe and the Middle East, a region that currently has its proptech moment, with another major player, Nawy, also increasing an important round this year. Huspy plans to operate in more than 10 cities by the end of 2025.
