Microsoft pledged $500M for housing affordability. But these local startups have made it their mission

While Microsoft’s $500 pledge to alleviate Seattle’s housing crisis is admirable, other local tech startups have made the issue their mission. Here are four tech startups helping to level the region’s decidedly tilted housing market.

Written by Quinten Dol
Published on Jan. 18, 2019

Yesterday, Microsoft became the latest local tech giant to pledge a sizable chunk of change against Puget Sound’s ongoing housing affordability crisis. The Redmond giant announced it would dedicate $500 million to fund the construction of affordable housing, the largest philanthropic act in the company’s history. It comes after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made a $2 billion commitment to help alleviate homelessness and improve early education, and software company Tableau’s pledge of $100 million to boost global health and human rights groups.

While these are admirable acts from large enterprises that arguably bear some responsibility for the region’s inflated housing costs, smaller startups have made affordability — and better city living — their singular mission. Here are four Seattle-based startups helping to level the playing field in our decidedly tilted housing market.

 

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flyhomes clients seattle tech
photo via flyhomes

Founded: 2015

Headquarters: Downtown Seattle

Affordability angle: Giving everyone the power of a cash offer.

Details: In real estate lingo, a buyer who has enough money on hand to purchase a property without financing from a lender is making a cash offer — and in Seattle’s still-hot housing market, the cash offer is king. The result is that investment groups and extremely wealthy buyers can usually outbid folks on average incomes, because sellers generally prefer to receive their money up front.

FlyHomes seeks to even the odds by making a cash offer on an average income earner’s behalf. The Seattle company sticks with its clients through every step of the home-buying journey, helping to inspect the property, sharing detailed pricing analyses and leveraging its negotiators to take care of the paperwork. Once FlyHomes makes a cash offer and secures the home on a buyer’s behalf, buyers have 30 days to sort out their financing. The startup also recently expanded its offerings to include mortgages, title and escrow and home repair and renovation services.

 

blokable edmonds development affordable housing
photo via blokable

Founded: 2016

Headquarters: Vancouver, WA with offices in Seattle

Affordability angle: Rethinking housing construction

Details: Ambitious Blokable is intent on nothing less than creating “a new paradigm for housing creation.” How? The company designs and builds standardized, modular housing units (dubbed “bloks”) in its manufacturing facility, which can then be moved to a location and stacked, combined and connected to create a new kind of low-cost living — with a high quality of life.

The bloks are fully customizable: they can be stacked up to three stories tall and configured into standalone homes, multi-unit developments above retail and community spaces, and be converted into studios or three-bedroom apartments. Each unit is built as a connected home, and community and property managers can use the company’s analytics platform to monitor the units’ safety and performance, while the company’s software works to minimize maintenance, repair and insurance costs. Blokable also uses a development software platform to coordinate the multitude of systems and supply chains from one dashboard. The first ever village built using Blokable’s housing units (pictured above) began construction last June in Edmonds.

 

citybldr seattle real estate development startup
photo via citybldr

Founded: 2016

Headquarters: Capitol Hill

Affordability angle: Maximizing ROI for landowners; designating the best and most efficient use of land

Details: Seattle’s CityBldr figures out the development potential for communities and plots by deploying artificial intelligence to sift through dozens of real estate datasets and recommending potential combinations of land parcels and uses. The company works with developers, builders, engineers, city planners, contractors, investors and others to verify the technology’s recommendations, and offers the information to property owners free of charge. The goal is to align the incentives of developers, residents and cities to find the best possible use for land — which often means combining multiple plots to enable increased density and thereby allow closer communities and lower costs of living.

The company has teams in Seattle and Los Angeles, and services communities along the West Coast. Co-founder and CEO Bryan Copley told Built In Seattle that the company planned to service whichever city Amazon eventually chose for HQ2 and, sure enough, CityBldr now provides development recommendations for New York City, Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia.

 

loftium seattle rent startup
photo via loftium

Founded: 2016

Headquarters: Capitol Hill

Affordability angle: Paying off a new home by renting a room on Airbnb

Details: Loftium leases homes from landowners, and lowers rent for tenants by having them rent a room on Airbnb. The Seattle startup signs a two-to-three-year lease with landlords, and guarantees tenancy for the duration of the lease. The company finds renters who are willing to manage an Airbnb and, after covering property costs for each month, tenants keep a share of the income. That share starts at 20 percent for the first year, and reaches 50 percent by year three of the partnership. Loftium also pays cleaning fees for the apartment, and furnishes the listing on a tenant’s behalf.

Loftium has changed tack since it garnered national media coverage in 2017 for a business model that involved granting home buyers with up to $50,000 for a down payment, and then paying itself back by leasing an extra room on Airbnb. The company’s updated platform includes automated messaging services and an automated pricing engine to optimize each listing for profitability.

 

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